Panetta: US military can`t make up NATO shortfalls
Baku, October 5 (AZERTAC). Facing deep budget cuts, the U.S. will no longer be able to make up for the significant shortfalls that have plagued NATO`s operations in Libya and Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Wednesday, exhorting allies to work together or risk losing the ability to take on such missions.
Just three months into the job, Panetta stopped short of the blistering critique delivered by his predecessor, Robert Gates, in June, when Gates questioned the alliance`s viability and bluntly warned that it faces a "dim, if not dismal, future."
With the Pentagon facing $450 billion in budget cuts over the next 10 years, allies can`t assume that the U.S. will be able to continue covering NATO`s shortcomings, Panetta said. And with other countries facing similar pressures, he said the nations must coordinate cuts and pool their capabilities in order to continue.
"We cannot afford for countries to make decisions about force structure and force reductions in a vacuum, leaving neighbors and allies in the dark," Panetta said.
America`s alliance with Europe emerged out of necessity in the Cold War era, but it has lost support and many, particularly in the United States, question its purpose.
A political awakening rippling across the Middle East has touched off uprisings, including the one in Libya. And while the U.S. took a larger role early on in the conflict to protect Libyan citizens, over time others stepped in.
Now, with ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in hiding and the opposition forces banging at the door of one of his strongholds, NATO can finally point to fragile progress in the 6-month-old mission.
France and Britain have now flown a third of the overall sorties and attacked 40 percent of the targets, Panetta said. Smaller nations, such as Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Romania and Bulgaria, have contributed airstrikes and ships for the arms embargo. In addition, Panetta pointed to shortages of ammunition and supplies as well as refueling tankers — all gaps the U.S. had to fill.
The allies, meanwhile, have struggled to maintain a force of about 40,000.
"We are at a critical moment for our defense partnership," Panetta warned, stressing the need for other nations to share the burden. "While these warnings have been acknowledged, growing fiscal pressures on both sides of the Atlantic, I fear, have eroded the political will to do something about them."
Looking ahead to the planned NATO summit in Chicago in May, Panetta said the allies must pool their resources and hammer out multinational solutions to face the next generation of threats.
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