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GARMISCH, Germany (June 26, 2008) - NATO's long-term relevance
will be tied directly to success in Afghanistan, and the slower
NATO moves to ensure that success, the longer it will take to
achieve, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said here
yesterday.
Navy Adm. Mike Mullen told about 200 students at the George C.
Marshall European Center for Security Studies he's "desperate to
get more capability" out of NATO. He said it's critical that NATO
lives up to its commitments to the alliance's International
Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
The biggest need, Mullen said, is for trainers for the Afghan
National Army and Afghan National Police and advisors to help the
Afghan ministries develop capacity. And every day those
requirements go unfulfilled, he said, stretches out the timeline
for Afghanistan to reach self-sufficiency.
"The slower we are at doing this - and we are pretty slow - the
longer it is going to take," Mullen said. "And it is going to take
a long time in Afghanistan."
Mullen is expected to continue pressing NATO members to step up
their contributions in Afghanistan at a NATO Military Committee
chiefs of staff session in Brussels, Belgium, tomorrow,.
Earlier this year, President Bush approved what he stressed
would be an "extraordinary, one-time" seven-month deployment of
about 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan. Those Marines, from the 24th
Marine Expeditionary Unit and 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment,
have had "an extraordinary impact," Mullen told the Joint Staff
during a June 23 Pentagon town hall meeting.
But Mullen emphasized yesterday that the U.S. military simply
doesn't have the manpower to keep trying to cover the
shortfall.
"The simple math is that I can't put any more forces in
Afghanistan until I come down in Iraq," he told the group. He noted
that initiatives to "grow" the Army and Marine Corps will take two
to three years to develop deployment-ready troops. Meanwhile, U.S.
troops are "pressed very hard" from multiple deployments to both
Iraq and Afghanistan, with too little tim" at home stations between
deployments. Mullen said keeping up the current operational tempo
for the long term will be impossible.
The chairman cited politics, economy and security as critical to
Afghanistan's success, and said Afghanistan needs long-term help in
building that "three-legged stool."
"They have to be linked. But you have to work each one of those
legs to link them," he said. "That's why ... we say this is a long
haul, and we need help. We need countries stepping forward to do
this."
Mullen told students at the Marshall Center that he finds it
difficult to understand why some NATO countries don't share the
deep concern the United States and other alliance members have
about the situation in Afghanistan.
"It is very clear to me that those who live in Europe see [the
terrorist threat] differently from those of us in the United
States," he said. Why Europe "isn't more excited about what's going
on there than those of us in the United States," Mullen said, is a
question to which he doesn't know the answer.
Afghanistan, where NATO leads the ISAF effort, is "at the heart
of NATO right now," he said. "And I believe that whether NATO is
going to be relevant in the future is tied directly to a positive
outcome in Afghanistan. And we've got a lot of work to do there,
[and] some significant challenges."
Mullen spent most of the day at the Marshall Center, which
opened in 1993 to promote dialog and understanding among nations of
North America, Europe and Eurasia. He met with students halfway
through the 12-week Program in advanced security studies, and
others wrapping up the five-week program on terrorism and security
studies.
Mullen noted that many of the students will go on to become
leaders in their country's militaries and governments, as one prime
minister, three defense ministers, nine defense chiefs, four
foreign affairs ministers, some 30 other ministers, 56 Parliament
members and 82 ambassadors already have.
When they do so, Mullen urged them to apply the lessons learned
at the Marshall Center and to return in the future to help educate
the next class of students who will follow in their footsteps.
"We need great leadership for as far as I can see into the
future," Mullen told them, "because I also see nothing but
challenges."
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