Full transcript of the speech and discussion with Admiral James Stavridis, NATO SACEUR, at the 2010 Wroclaw Global Forum.
THE ATLANTIC COUNCIL OF THE UNITED STATES
WROCŁAW GLOBAL FORUM:
A REGIONAL ALLIANCE IN A MULTIPOLAR WORLD
WELCOME AND MODERATOR:
DAMON WILSON,
VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM,
THE ATLANTIC COUNCIL
SPEAKERS:
ADM. JAMES G. STAVRIDIS,
NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER EUROPE,
NATO
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2010
10:30 A.M.
WROCŁAW, POLAND
Transcript by
Federal News Service
Washington, D.C.
DAMON WILSON: (In progress) – world. And we’re very grateful for Minister Dakalavitch (ph) for your participation. Thank you, Ambassador Feinstein, terrific American-Polish duo to kick off this morning’s discussion.
My name’s Damon Wilson. I’m vice president of the Atlantic Council and director of our international security program. And I’m just delighted to welcome you all to our discussion today on NATO. We’re calling this discussion – this conversation with Adm. Stavridis, “A Regional Alliance in a Multipolar World”.
I’m particularly delighted to welcome Adm. Stavridis here to Wrocław as NATO supreme commander, allied commander, Europe. I’ve had the honor to get to know Adm. Stavridis since just prior to his assuming command of Allied Command Operations. And I’m particularly struck by how effective a public voice – a public advocate – he is for the alliance.
And that’s why we’re so pleased that he can join us today in Wrocław. NATO needs a public advocate in today’s world. In fact, we mentioned him earlier in the previous session, one of the audience participants proposed the dissolution of NATO. And I think this discussion now will be a discussion that takes on that argument in some respects.
But as allied leaders prepare to gather in Lisbon next month at the Lisbon Summit, some critics, indeed, are asking whether this summit will mark the revitalization of the alliance as it adopts a new strategic concept and captures a renewed sense of solidarity and purpose, or whether, on the other hand, the summit will mark a period of retrenchment as the alliance lays the groundwork to scale back its commitment in Afghanistan, scales down its own command structure and faces the stark reality of massive defensive cuts across the continent.
This conversation this morning is an opportunity to delve into these – this series of questions. Can the mantra of “in together, out together”, which the Europeans used to keep the Americans in the Balkans in the ’90s work now to keep the Europeans in Afghanistan? What about Pakistan, where we read in the news, the continuing attacks on NATO-bound convoys?
Does the alliance have the will and the resources to assume new tasks such as missile defense and cyber security in an era of defense spending austerity? Can the alliance strike the right balance between engagement with Russia and strengthening the credibility of the Article V commitment to its members?
And as the title of this panel suggests, how does NATO today fit into a security environment in which threats are global, powerful actors are no longer congregated around the Euro-Atlantic area and there’s a proliferation of organizations and actors that are not used to interacting with the military alliance to solve problems which require much more than military solutions?
So before we get our conversation started, let me properly introduce our guest. Adm. Stavridis became the 16th supreme allied commander Europe in July 2009. A month prior to that, he also assumed command of U.S. – United States European Command. He’s the first Navy admiral to assume this post since it was established in 1951.
Adm. Stavridis has a distinguished career as a surface warfare officer, including commanding the Enterprise Carrier Strike Group, which conducted combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And before coming to Europe, he commanded U.S. Southern Command, focused on Latin America and the Caribbean.
He’s a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. He earned his Ph.D. at Tufts University, the Fletcher School and is the author of several books. He has proven to be one of America’s great warrior scholars and perhaps the first to so effectively embrace social media as a means to advance his mission.
In fact, Fred, just prior to this, said we think Adm. Stavridis raises America’s IQ by 20 points. (Laughter.) And in fact, I took a look at this Facebook page last night in preparation for this discussion and it reminded me – he’s here today with his Polish colleague, Gen. Jenuk (ph) and he also has, still highlighted on his Facebook page, a very touching posting of the moment he was informed of the death of his colleague, his friend, Gen. Gagor, who died with the Polish president on his flight. And it underscored, as I was looking through his Facebook page, the important role that Poland has played within the alliance and the personal friendship that he had a chance to forge.
So we’d like to kick off this morning’s discussion, turn it over to Adm. Stavridis. We’ve asked him, basically, to help address this issue facing the alliance, how he sees the challenges to NATO, now that he’s 15 months into his job as SACEUR, how does he see the challenges facing the alliance, especially given the global nature of threats, the fact that our security focus is on the wider Middle East and the increasing shift of economic, political, military power from the trans-Atlantic community, perhaps, to the Pacific.
So with that, let me turn it over to you, Adm. Stavridis. Thank you.
(Break.)
(Applause.)
ADM. JAMES STAVRIDIS: Well, thank you, everybody. And Mr. Mayor, thank you very much, sir, for that very kind introduction and the welcome to this spectacular city. I’m from Florida, in the United States, which is the warmest of our states and I think I know a nice, warm welcome when I see one and I particularly commend you for the extraordinary work you’re doing, hosting this conference.
Fred, thank you so much for putting this together and welcoming me and allowing me a few moments to discuss these important topics. And I definitely want to greet my good friend, the CHOD of Poland here and say, thank you, sir, I look forward to a nice, quiet lunch today with some pierogies and kielbasa and we’ll solve all the world’s problems, one by one. (Laughter.)
I know everyone gets nervous when they see someone who has a PowerPoint presentation. In fact, it’s often said the most dangerous thing in the world today is a military officer from the United States with a PowerPoint presentation. But this one is easy. I will simply put up a few photographs, a few images to illustrate a couple of points.
And I’ll do exactly what Damon asked me to do, which is to talk a bit about the challenges facing the alliance and what we’re doing about them – what we’re thinking about. And I’ll do all that in 10 or 15 minutes and we’ll have plenty of time to take some questions and have a good dialogue.
I do want to unveil something today. As Damon indicated, we are in an era of increasing financial austerity. Defense budgets are coming down and I’ve been working on something in my headquarters to try and bring innovation to the way we train. Next slide. (Laughter.) So we’re going to save a little money doing that. (Laughter.) In all seriousness, next slide.
Let me begin by saying, as I always do at any presentation, that I believe NATO is a bridge. It’s an effective bridge and this bridge may be one that people recognize here. It’s in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the eastern part of that country. It’s the bridge over the Drina River and it’s figured in the title of novel, “The Bridge Over the Drina,” by Ivo Andrić, the great Nobel laureate from this part of the world.
I think bridges are important. They bring us together. They connect us. They are built at a place where human need meets accomplishment and I think NATO continues to be a bridge today – a bridge in time that connects us with our history and our past, a bridge of culture and language that connects today 28 nations.
And indeed, I think, above all, NATO is a bridge to the future, hence, the title of my presentation. And again, if you’ll permit me, a nautical metaphor, I think NATO very much will sail on very effectively into this turbulent 21st century.
So why does NATO exist? Next, please. This is the class of 1914 from Saint-Cyr, the French military academy. The photograph was taken in 1914, the graduating class. By 1918, everybody in this photograph is dead – not some of them, not most of them, not many of them, all of them.
Poland knows war as well and I think as we look back at the calamitous, the difficult, the disastrous 20th century in Europe, where 60 million people lost their lives in two wars, one of the great strengths of NATO is that it has brought this continent together. We have avoided conflict here and I think that is crucial and important as we think about NATO sailing forward.
Next, please. This is what we seek to avoid and I hardly need to emphasize, in a city like this, that suffered a devastating attack at the end of the last world war, here in Poland, that suffered greatly in a continent that lost 20 million, minimum in the Second World War alone, the importance of continuing security arrangements so we avoid these kind of calamitous events.
Next, please. So that brings us to NATO, forged as a result of that war and the wars of the 20th century. Today, it’s a big table. Twenty-eight nations around that table. Sometimes, I am asked, Admiral, is it hard as the operations officer for NATO, is it difficult to move your operations forward with so many nations having the opportunity to comment, to be part of the dialogue? And the answer is no.
Today, we have 130,000 NATO soldiers and sailors and airmen who are in Afghanistan. They’re in the Balkans. They’re flying air-policing missions. They are at sea conducting counter-piracy. They are training, they are operating and it all passes through this council. And in my view, it works effectively. Next, please.
I talked a little about austerity earlier. We are in a time of financial austerity, yet we should remember how resource-rich this NATO alliance is. These are GDPs around the world – European Union, United States, Japan and China, of course, have large GDPs. That next tier down, many of the Europeans and then Spain and Canada. These are the 12 largest GDPs in the world, of which nine are NATO members.
And in the upper right is the GDP of NATO, $31 trillion. We have 6 million men and women under arms in NATO, almost all of them volunteers. So this is an alliance, not only with deep, historical purpose with a functioning political process, but also significant resources. Next, please.
So let me talk about some challenges. Whenever I begin with challenges to discuss the European context, I think one that is worth considering is demographics. It’s the aging of the European population. Nine of the 10 countries that will suffer the greatest reduction in their populations, nine of 10 are in Europe over the next 20 or 30 years.
That’s in the Baltics, it’s in the Balkans. It is also part of Russia’s future unless demographics change dramatically, which is unlikely, as well as some of the Western European nations.
Demographics will impact security in a variety of ways, reducing the numbers of young men and women who are available to serve, putting pressures on financial systems as well as creating social-fabric pressures as a result of the immigration which will inevitably come as a result of these demographic shifts. This is not NATO’s problem to solve at all, but it is worth understanding it in the context of the European security challenges going forward. Next, please.
More obviously, perhaps, Europe is very much part of the challenge we face as an alliance and as a larger coalition in Afghanistan. Often, people say Afghanistan is NATO’s great challenge. Well, NATO is very involved there and in my view, we can and will succeed in Afghanistan.
It’s important to remember that there are 28 NATO nations but in total, there are 49 nations from around the world that have troops on the ground and 70 nations that are actively involved in contributing resources, financing and other support to this effort. So this is a challenge, but it is one that is being met not only by NATO, but also by a much larger global coalition. Next, please.
This is an awful picture. This is a parliament building in Sarajevo being attacked by tank fire and destroyed. It was the beginning stages of the Siege of Sarajevo. I mention this in the context of progress. Fifteen years ago, Sarajevo underwent a three-year siege, the longest in modern history.
Today, when we look at the Balkans, we see enormous progress since those times. Today, Slovenia, Croatia, Albania are members of NATO. Damon Wilson just came from meetings in Montenegro to discuss their very-active and forward-moving map. There are other nations in the Balkans that aspire to membership.
We are working with Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example. We have come a long way since these days. We’ve come a long way since 8,000 men and boys were killed in a week in Srebrenica. So the challenges of the Balkans remain. It is a difficult part of the world. And yet, the progress since these days is noteworthy.
And as we look at Afghanistan and we think of the challenges of Afghanistan, we should recall how difficult the Balkans looked to us 10 years ago, not just in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but also Kosovo, more recently. We can make progress for moments like this as an international community.
(Break.)
ADM. STAVRIDIS: (In progress) – piracy. NATO is very involved in piracy. There’s nothing an admiral likes than a few pirates to chase around from time to time. I hasten to say this is an example of an operation where it is the European Union that is leading. NATO is in a complementary role.
We are supportive of those efforts. We work side by side off the Horn of Africa along with many other nations. So a challenge, but one that I think the global community is meeting. Next, please.
I worry about long-range ballistic missiles from Iran. Iran is actively developing very competent missile systems. Today, they have missile systems that can reach half-a-dozen European capitals. That capability will continue to expand. I’m an advocate of missile defense. The United States is moving a system forward.
Poland is cooperating along with a number of nations with the idea of the phased adaptive approach. I think it’s a good one. It’ll be discussed by the alliance. It’ll be offered to the NATO alliance and we will be prepared to operationalize it if the alliance decides to do so. Next, please.
Terrorism, of course, is part of the landscape here in Europe, unfortunately, as it is all over the world. We’ve seen terrorist incidents in the last decade in Madrid, in London, in Moscow. It is something that is principally a law-enforcement function, but we have intelligence sharing, information sharing and part of what we do in Afghanistan is to prevent scenes like this.
Next, please. Cyber is an area that I worry about a great deal. The alliance needs to do more to be prepared for this. Cyber attacks have occurred and I believe will continue to occur and as a result, we must to do more to prepare for this and I’m hoping the Strategic Concept will address this. Next, please.
Narcotics, again, not a NATO problem to solve, but part of the fabric of security challenge, not only because of the human damage like this; this is an addict, but also because of the funding that comes out of narcotics and flows back to Afghanistan and to terrorist organizations. Next, please.
And natural disasters are part of our landscape here. I was with my team yesterday looking at the toxic spill in a neighboring country here. We had terrible forest fires in Russia last summer. We were helpful in this. We seek to be an organization that can be responsive as we are at the moment in Pakistan, where we have NATO flights going in and out with humanitarian supplies.
So that’s a quick overview – next, please – of the challenges that I see in the landscape. Now, let me give you a few ideas. Next, please.
First of all, I think we all need to do more to learn, to read, to study, to understand history, culture, language. Some books I’ve been reading lately that help illuminate, for me, challenging areas and ideas in the world. We publish a very comprehensive reading list on my NATO website and my EUCOM website.
We bring distinguished authors to NATO to speak. Most recently, David Kilcullen, author of “The Accidental Guerilla”, came and gave a superb presentation on counterinsurgency. Fora like this that bring idea leaders together are crucial and are part of how we move ideas, share ideas in this 21st century. Next, please.
We all need to be better at this, strategic communications. This happens to be in Afghanistan, but it’s part of something I do, literally, every day, try and move the message of NATO in positive ways, in honest ways, as does the secretary general and all of us because we owe it to our publics to tell them what we are doing, why we are doing it, how we are doing it and to be accountable to our publics. Next, please.
This is something we talk about a lot in NATO. This is the comprehensive approach. It is bringing together all the elements of capability, financial, economic, cultural, linguistic, military, to create positive strategic effect. In Afghanistan, we must get this comprehensive approach right, the balance between civil and military activity. It will be crucial. Next, please.
And to zoom up from that tactical photograph I showed you of a young soldier involved in the comprehensive approach, this would be the large representation. It’s bringing together many nations, bringing together international organizations.
You see the United Nations at the top, of course, the World Bank, agencies for development from around the world, private entities, Agha-Khan, global partnerships, superb diplomats like Ambassador Mark Sedwill on the left and Ambassador de Mistura on the right, bringing all of this together.
The military, NATO, our operations are only a part of this comprehensive approach to succeed in Afghanistan and to succeed in these security challenges in this 21st century, we must apply this. Next, please.
I’ll give you another example. These are Afghan soldiers. There are 265,000 Afghan soldiers and policemen. Sadly, many of them cannot read. The books they are holding here are literacy manuals. NATO, today, is training 27,000 Afghan soldiers to read. By next summer, we will have 100,000 in reading training.
They will not become scholars and lawyers, but they will be able to fill out a police report, to read a map, to be participants in the security challenges of their nation. And they are incredibly enthusiastic about this. In the end, we will not kill our way to success in Afghanistan, we will train our way and teach our way to success in Afghanistan. Next, please.
And these are Afghan soldiers learning those military skills. And this is the military part of the comprehensive approach and I would say this is one of the bright spots of real progress in Afghanistan in the 15 months that I have seen. Next, please.
Piracy – just a word to point out to you. Look at these flags. Look how many nations are involved here in different coalitions and groups. You see NATO in the upper left, European Union in the lower left, independent nations that have sent ships that check in, coordinate, and work alongside the others.
On the bottom right, a task force from the Arabian Gulf. You will notice, there, flags from China, Japan, Russia, India, Malaysia as well as those of us from the European and the other side of the Atlantic, the United States. This is the future of security operations. It’s not unilateral action by one nation. It is groups and coalitions that will change depending on the mission and piracy is something virtually everybody agrees needs to be stopped.
Next, please. The NATO Response Force, I think, is a positive, important part of the alliance. We continue to work at that very hard and I am convinced it will be part of our future in security in this part of the world. Next, please.
New organizational entities. This is the Center for Cyber Defense in Tallinn, Estonia. Setting up the Centres of Excellence is part of what we’re doing in NATO to try and deal with some of these emerging threats. Next, please.
We talked – Damon was nice enough to mention my proclivity, my desire, my enthusiasm about social networks. You see Facebook in the upper right there, the trick question, of course, is what’s the third largest nation in the world after China and India? The answer? Facebook nation – 550 million people on Facebook.
If you want to move your message, it’s great to publish in journals and to write books, lower right, and you reach an audience of hundreds or you can be on Facebook and you’re reaching an audience of hundreds of millions. So NATO needs to move in this world. We need to swim in this sea. Next, please.
And we need to use new technologies. This is biometrics, a growing field that we are using very effectively today in Afghanistan as part of counterterrorism. It’s increasingly an important technology, but it’s one of countless technologies and they don’t all come from the big, industrial countries.
Some of the most clever innovations I’ve seen are from smaller NATO nations like Slovakia and Slovenia for example. So this idea of tapping emerging technology, I think, must be part of NATO’s future as well. Next, please.
And there’s the scene I never thought I’d see when I was growing up as a young officer. This is the Welsh Guards of Great Britain marching in Red Square. That happened just a few months ago. It’s an example of the need to find zones of cooperation with Russia. We must do that. We cannot afford to stumble back into a Cold War mentality.
And there are many zones of cooperation with Russia – counter-narcotics, counter-piracy, counterterrorism, arms control, training and exchange of ideas. There is a great deal that can be done and I would put on the table, missile defense as a possible zone of cooperation with Russia moving forward. We need to have these positive relationships across the European continent.
Next, please. In the Balkans, this is a recent event, the installation – the enthronement, I believe, is the correct term, of the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. It happened in Kosovo, where KFOR, a NATO force, is providing a safe and secure environment in which thousands of Serbs – next please – saw their patriarch enthroned.
Again, the Balkans – we can do this. We can help create a zone of security and safety and stability so this part of the world can move forward.
(Break.)
ADM. STAVRIDIS: (In progress) – Article V – it is the bedrock of this alliance. No one should forget that. It’s fundamental. I believe the Strategic Concept will reemphasize the crucial importance of Article V. Next, please.
And we will all be reading the Strategic Concept, I think, very soon. What I would like to see in it, comprehensive approach, cyber, crisis management, missile defense. There are other ideas. Those are a few that we are thinking about from my vantage point and waiting to see what the nations decide. But this is an exciting moment for the alliance and part of why I believe this alliance will be vital and will continue to sail on. Next, please.
This is an alliance about military power. That’s what we do and who we are. But – next, please – it’s not an on-and-off switch. It’s not as though NATO is only for high-end combat operations or we just go sit in our hangars and our barracks. It’s a rheostat. You dial in the need and it can range all the way from hard power, special operations in Afghanistan all the way back to humanitarian flights going into Pakistan and everywhere in between. Next, please.
So to conclude, I would offer you the vision statement of this company, this global brand, Wikipedia. The motto statement is “A vision, a vision of a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge” because that’s what Wikipedia is. It’s millions of people contributing information and millions of people taking that data, those facts and those ideas and sharing them. That’s what a wiki is.
So my proposition is as we go forward into this turbulent 21st century, all of us need to participate in creating a world in which we can all share in the sum of all security. I think NATO has a significant role in that. Next, please. And I believe NATO will sail on. Thank you. (Applause.)
MR. WILSON: Admiral, that was fantastic and I think you’ve just – you’ve validated my accolade to the start of this session, that you are one of the most public advocates for the alliance.
I think that was extremely well done and I think you’ve gone a long way in the presentation to basically answer the discussion, the theme of this conversation, “NATO: A Regional Alliance in a Multipolar World”. I think you’ve explained very well how NATO fits into the complexity.
I’d like to use my prerogative as chair to be able to ask the first question and then turn to Gen. Jenuk, if you had a comment, a response, a question to add to that. I think your message on the Balkans, I think was very relevant to helping us think through Afghanistan today. You very clearly made the point that our role in the Balkans still matters all these years after the focus of our military operations there.
Secretary-General Rasmussen, in describing Afghanistan, has used the word “transition” to frame the theme for the Lisbon Summit. To many critics of the alliance and to many ears in the region, transition sounds like a euphemism for withdrawal. I think your point on the Balkans underscored the longevity of a likely commitment.
Given the reality that NATO, in some respects, is going to remain engaged for years in Afghanistan, how do you, as SACEUR, help prevent a stampede to the exit from forces in Afghanistan today as we deal with the reality of a politically-imposed withdrawal by the Dutch, real budget constraints and costs – cuts across Europe, the looming deadline that President Obama set for July 2011 for the beginning of a drawdown of U.S. forces. How do you manage that with the reality of the Balkans in the back of your mind?
ADM. STAVRIDIS: That’s a terrific question. First, someone was asking me about my medals as I was walking in. I think the mayor was and I said every one of them is an accident of my youth. But I would point to the little blue one right there. It’s my NATO medal for an Operation Sharp Guard, which had to do with events in the Balkans just over 10 years ago.
And my feeling is when I do look at that medal occasionally, in another five years, in another 10 years, I want that medal to still matter. I want us to continue to make progress in the Balkans and I believe we will and we are, in fact, as testament to that success, we are downsizing our presence.
We were there at 15,000 in Kosovo. We’re down under 10,000 and very soon, I think we’ll be under 5,000. So that sense of progress and engagement is what makes our sacrifices matter. As I look at Afghanistan, I feel exactly the same way, that we will not have a rush for the exits. I don’t see one.
We will not have a sudden, sharp collapse in our forces. We will not allow this to fall back. I think the opposite. You used the word, Damon, and it’s the right word. It’s on everybody’s tongue these days, transition. And I hope in my presentation, when I talked about the Afghan security forces and their progress, you could feel that sense of transition because that’s what’s coming.
We are going to, beginning in the summer of 2011, we are going to, conditions-based, begin to slow down, withdraw some of our forces as we bring up Afghan security forces. And I am confident that plan will succeed. We have a terrific general who’s in charge of that, Gen. Dave Petraeus.
All the reports I get, all that I see in my seven trips in the last 15 months to Afghanistan tell me that we will continue to see improvement in the Afghan security forces to conduct that transition.
To make sure we do that, what we need are trainers. We need great NATO trainers. Here in Poland, the OMLTs, the POMLTs, these are teams that train army and police are among the very best in Afghanistan. The work in Ghazni is superb, where they are partnered – the Poles are partnered with the Afghans and it’s an example of how we will conduct this transition with great trainers.
As to our Dutch friends who have done terrific work in Afghanistan, they are reducing their combat forces, but I am very hopeful that they will remain in significant numbers as part of this training mission. So we will see a pivot from a combat-led role to a training-led role and I believe that over the next period beginning with the transition in the summer of 2011, we will be very successful with that approach.
We will look at our Afghan medals in a decade and feel that they mattered just like I look at mine from the Balkans today and I feel it continues to matter.
MR. WILSON: Thank you for that. I think you helped frame the expectations in a very helpful way –
(Break.)
MR. WILSON: Let me ask – would your – would the Polish CHOD like to make a comment – a question – can I have the mike in the front, please?
MR. : Thank you, Admiral. I would like to have a – I can say, it’s a great pleasure for all of us that we can host supreme commander of NATO. The position – your position is most important in the case of the difference in Europe and not only in Europe. I will have an opportunity to discuss many issues with – to Adm. Stavridis and I don’t want to take time which is probably very limited and audience can use this time probably more effectively than I can do.
But once again, thank you – thank you very much for your participation in this very important conference and I would like to say that our membership in the NATO is very important for NATO and for all the region and your leadership in this alliance is very beneficial for us. Thank you very much. (Applause.)
MR. WILSON: Thank you, Gen. Jenuk.
ADM. STAVRIDIS: Thank you, sir.
MR. WILSON: We are on a tight time schedule, so I want to be sure to allow some time for questions from the audience. So if we could start in the back with the woman back here. If we could get a mike, please?
Q: Hello. Dr. Katarzyna Pisarska. I’m the director of the European Academy of Diplomacy. Admiral, thank you for a very holistic and deep speech. I think we all very much appreciated to hear overall perspective on what is happening to NATO. I have to very quick questions.
First, what do you say when you speak with our Russian friends when they talk about the need to build a new security architecture in Europe? What is your opinion on this? Is NATO enough or not enough?
And my second question, I was particularly happy to see the slides that you showed, showing the need of synergy of all possible means, including multicultural, education, women. We lacked women in the panels here on the global forum. I’m afraid there was not a single one apart from one moderate, Fran Burwell. How do you engage women? Do you engage women in NATO? And is this an important factor in this synergy that you are talking about? Thank you.
MR. WILSON: Very good question.
ADM. STAVRIDIS: Thanks. Both interesting and very on point questions. In terms of engagement with women in NATO, I look no further than my own personal staff, where I have a woman who is the head of my legislative affairs group that works on parliamentary and congressional – woman who’s in charge of my strategic communications group.
She is the mind behind – as we would say in American English – our whole social networking and outreach. And perhaps most importantly, a woman who is a brilliant woman who has a Ph.D. from one of our U.S. universities who is in charge of private and public cooperation, together, Dr. Evelyn Farkas, who many of you may know. She’s fluent in Hungarian and German, absolutely brilliant.
It’s simply an example of we need to tap all the human capital and we absolutely must engage women at every level in the alliance. And I’m confident, as I move around the alliance, I see many, many women in positions of higher authority than me, as in, prime ministers, presidents, ministers of defense. You need look no further than right across the way here to the Baltic states, where there are women in very senior positions, much senior to mine, for example. So I think the trend of history is definitely in that direction and I’m confident that it will continue to be so.
In terms of the Russian proposals for defense architecture, my view is listen respectfully. Russia is an important country in the European scheme of themes. We ought to fully understand those proposals and then decide on appropriate fora in which to converse about them. And there are several possibilities for doing that around the European circuit.
In terms of a U.S. response to that, I would defer to the ambassador. From a NATO perspective, we are certainly in the mode of listening constructively and respectfully to proposals and having a dialogue. I, myself, am going to Moscow at the end of this month, so I’ll have a chance to listen and hear more about it.
When I have a fuller understanding of what is being proposed, then I will work to give my military advice to the civilian authorities in NATO who will, of course, deal with what is quite obviously, essentially a political question.
(Break.)
Q: My name is – (inaudible). I must say I found – and I don’t mean this personally – I found the slides kind of insult to my intelligence and I guess many people in this room – we are, perhaps, not the right audience. It might be nice for housewives coming to the – they paint such a rosy and simplistic picture of what’s going on.
I mean Afghanistan and many of your colleagues and many of the finest military experts around the world not in the alliance agree it’s a terrible mess and the question is, what’s the purpose? This is antagonizing the Islamic world, creating new enemies. In any case, it’s an experience, a chapter of unbelievable self-weakening of the West, above all, United States, of course in a time when there are so many overwhelming other challenges.
So it’s – perhaps you can enlighten us a bit, a war that seems perfectly absurd to people with just common sense and others, of course, to the experts. So what is – what can be real useful purpose of this war? Sorry for –
(Cross talk.)
MR. WILSON: Thank you. And if we could – maybe we could –
ADM. STAVRIDIS: No. Yeah, no, let me just answer that immediately because it’s just such a provocative question, obviously. And I appreciate your sentiment and obviously, many people around the world have differing views on the – both the purpose and the progress in Afghanistan.
I will tell you that I have spent a great deal of my life and career studying insurgency. I spent three years focused on insurgency in Colombia before coming here. I spent a great deal of time studying insurgencies in this part of the world and I have devoted myself, over the last 15 months to the study of this particular challenge.
This is something that reasonable people can have different views about, certainly. My own view is that this mission is occurring because of the nexus of terrorist threat that came out of Afghanistan, struck my own country, but has also been part of the threat stream to this day that is facing Europe and is the reason that travel advisories are being issued all over this continent.
So I think prima facie, obviously, there is purpose in what we are doing. In terms of progress, certainly there are areas of deep concern that we all have about Afghanistan. To name a couple that you didn’t name, I worry about corruption. I worry about the difficulty with neighbors in the region.
I worry about governance. I worry about long-term capabilities of Afghanistan and those are all legitimate questions. But I balance them an economy that has grown significantly – it grew 22 percent two years ago and 8 percent this year, a nation that is sitting on top of a trillion dollars in strategic minerals, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, manganese, most importantly, lithium. That will be in the batteries of all of our cars in a few years.
So I think there’s long-term economic viability. And on the strategic side, again, sir, I think the key is really transition. It’s can we train the Afghan security forces. Fifteen months, I would have been not so positive. In the 15 months that I’ve been going there and watching this unfold, I feel much better. I think we have a very reasonable chance at success in Afghanistan.
I did not mean to impose a rosy picture because it’s not. I think we all know that. The question is can we succeed and I think – my military advice – and I’m not a politically-inclined person and I have no particular personal stake in all of this – my military advice is press forward because I believe we will succeed. But I – I fully respect your disagreement with it. Thank you.
MR. WILSON: Very good answer. And I think we’re taking the last question up here.
Q: (Inaudible) – editor-in-chief of Liberte! Magazine. General – Admiral, sir, thank you very much for inspiring speech and for your presence is the best sign of – (inaudible) – partnership we can be hoping for. My question regards the interview that – (inaudible) – officer of the previous administration for Polish political magazine.
He said in this interview that during the negotiations with Russia over – well, negotiations – speeches and talks with Russia about the joining of the new countries of NATO in Central and Eastern Europe, the most informal agreement that will be – no significant NATO installations in those countries.
And then we have the Russia having troops in Transnistria, in Georgia, also having these maneuvers with Belarus in 2009. And the question is, should be – (inaudible) – central, eastern countries, in the border countries, perhaps we should expect more NATO significant presence, NATO troops, more American or NATO installations.
What’s your opinion to this and what’s your opinion, how we should respond to the maneuvers of Russia or other countries that are not NATO countries, who we should be – response to maneuvers that are directly, I would say, aimed to the NATO countries? Thank you.
ADM. STAVRIDIS: Well, thank you. And first of all, as I mentioned, I’m going, very shortly, to Moscow, to continue a dialogue that was begun about eight or nine months ago when Secretary-General Rasmussen went to Moscow. Between us, the chairman of the military committee, Adm. Di Paola went to Moscow and my deputy DSEC (ph) here went to Moscow.
I mention all those visits because I think if we have learned anything from the 20th century in Europe, it is that open communication and dialogue and transparency are the key to avoiding misunderstandings that could cause us to stumble into conflict. I’ll give you a concrete example of that.
The U.S. Navy hosts a series of exercises in the Baltic Sea every year called BALTOPS, Baltic Operations. This past year, we had ships from 18 nations involved in that, including Poland. And also, as part of the transparency, we had a Russian ship involved in that exercise. I think that kind of openness, dialogue, back to the question I answered for the woman over here about respect and listening respectfully to proposals.
Certainly, there are going to be areas we disagree about. You’ve named a couple. But I think the key, as we go forward, is ensuring that we find the zones of cooperation wherever we can, counter-piracy, counter-narcotics, missile defense, arms control, wherever we can find them. And on the other hand, where there are legitimate, honest disagreements, we must be firm.
So it’s all about balancing in relationships across spectrum and I’m confident, as I look at the long throe of events, the 20-plus years since the Berlin Wall came down, I think that broadly speaking, we continue to move forward in relationships between the Russian Federation and the West, broadly speaking.
And if we’d looked back where we were 40 years ago, when I graduated from Annapolis and I was training in how to launch torpedoes to sink enemy submarines, we’re in a very different place – in a much better place. There will be some starts and stops, but I’m confident we can move forward through them if we focus on dialogue, zones of cooperation and being firm where we must. Thank you.
MR. WILSON: Adm. Stavridis, thank you so much. I know we’re cutting into your time with your counterpart. We want to thank you for – you’ve been on the road all week. You listed a litany of –
ADM. STAVRIDIS: Let me just say. In the last seven days, I’ve been in Berlin, Paris, Tirana, Zagreb, Copenhagen, Stuttgart, Ramstein and right here in this beautiful city, talking all about these topics and focusing on trainers for Afghanistan because to my friend’s question over here, that is how we will succeed in Afghanistan. We will train the Afghan security forces.
But it’s – a wonderful part of my life is that I get to travel and come to so many wonderful gatherings like this. So thank you, Damon.
MR. WILSON: Well, I think the audience, knowing that, is even more appreciative of your taking time to add Wrocław to your itinerary this week. So thank you so much for joining us. I think this has been, really, one of the highlights of our forum here. So thank you for your time. That was terrific. (Applause.)
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