Pat Dollard

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MUNICH, Germany – Survival of the NATO alliance, a cornerstone of American security policy for six decades, is at stake in the debate over how the United States and Europe should share the burden of fighting Islamic extremism in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday.

“We must not—we cannot—become a two-tiered alliance of those willing to fight and those who are not,” Gates told the Munich Conference on Security Policy, where Afghanistan was a central topic.

“Such a development, with all its implications for collective security, would effectively destroy the alliance,” he added.

A central theme of Gates’ speech was his assertion that al-Qaida, either in Afghanistan or elsewhere, poses a greater threat to Europe than many Europeans realize.

“The threat from al-Qaida began with the Soviet invasion of a sovereign state in December 1979, a state that up to that point had not represented a threat to anybody in the world, except to a certain extent its own people because of its weakness and poverty,” Gates said in response to the Russian’s question.

“In NATO, some allies ought not have the luxury of opting only for stability and civilian operations, forcing other allies to bear a disproportionate share of the fighting and the dying,” Gates said.

He named no individual countries, but U.S. officials have been pressing Germany to do more.

U.S. Army Gen. John Craddock, the NATO supreme commander, said in an interview shortly before Gates’ appearance that the troops in Afghanistan would be making more progress if they had the resources they were promised more than a year ago. He said they are short at least three maneuver battalions, as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance tools to track movements on the ground.

Referring to a “paucity of troops,” Craddock said the commanders in Afghanistan are like the coach of an 11-player soccer team that is competing with two players less than a full team. He said the effect is that the commanders are unable to attack and defend as aggressively as they would like.

In his speech, Gates said the Bush administration had learned from mistakes made in Iraq, including the need to more closely integrate the civilian-led stabilization efforts with the military efforts. He said the United States and NATO must apply that lesson in Afghanistan to assure success.

Gates is hoping to persuade Germans and other Europeans that they have a big stake in the outcome in Afghanistan.

“I am concerned that many people on this continent may not comprehend the magnitude of the direct threat to European security,” posed by radical elements in Afghanistan, he said.

The Pentagon chief, who was a career CIA officer before retiring in said his remarks on Afghanistan were meant to reach “directly to the people of Europe” in a bid to persuade them on the war’s importance.

“The threat posed by violent Islamic extremism is real—and it is not going to go away,” he said, adding that Europe has seen a string of terrorist attacks—in London, Madrid, Istanbul, Amsterdam, Paris and Glasgow, Scotland. And he ticked off a list of plots that were disrupted before they could be carried out, including a plan to use ricin and release cyanide in the London Underground and a planned chemical attack in Paris.

“It raises the question: What would happen if the false success they proclaim became real success? If they triumphed in Iraq or Afghanistan, or managed to topple the government of Pakistan? Or a major Middle Eastern government?

“Aside from the chaos that would instantly be sown in the region, success there would beget success on many other fronts as the cancer metastasized further and more rapidly than it already has,” said Gates.