NATO alliance in danger of breaking

NATO alliance in danger of breaking,Gates says

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

          Robert Gates calls it “aging out.” He’s not referring to his imminent retirement as defense secretary. He’s talking about a generational expiration date on the American embrace of Europe as a pillar of US defense strategy.

          Gates made a splash with a scathing speech last week in Brussels, home of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in which he said the 62-year-old alliance faces a “dim, if not dismal” future. He was not disowning NATO but warning that a years-long fraying of trans-Atlantic ties could eventually break the bond.

          “I am worried,” he said in an Associated Press interview in his Pentagon office on Monday.

          Throughout the Cold War, beginning with NATO’s founding in 1949 as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and its East European allies, a military and political partnership with Western Europe was fundamental to US defense policy.

          “People like me who have an emotional stake in Europe and NATO are aging out,” he said in the interview. “For a lot of these younger people,”

           “I don’t feel I went too far,” he said. “I’ll tell you one place I got pretty unanimous positive reaction, and that was in the United States of America — across the entire political spectrum.”

           Obama administration is moving ahead with plans for a NATO-wide network of missile interceptors and radars designed to protect all European members from missile attacks by Iran.

          An interview, Gates said he does not foresee a sudden rupture with Europe or NATO.