SCENESETTER FOR POTUS'S MEETING WITH OUTGOING NATO

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 USNATO 000314 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/24/2019 TAGS: NATO PGOV PINR PREL SUBJECT: SCENESETTER FOR POTUS'S MEETING WITH OUTGOING NATO SYG JAAP DE HOOP SCHEFFER Classified By: Ambassador Ivo Daalder for Reasons 1.4(b) and (d) ¶1. (U) The following text is being transmitted for the President in memo format. ¶2. (C) Begin text: MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT FROM: Ambassador Ivo Daalder, US Mission to NATO SUBJECT: Scenesetter for Your Meeting with NATO SYG Jaap de Hoop Scheffer Mr President: This will be your last meeting with Jaap as Secretary General of NATO, and it provides an opportunity to express our gratitude for a job well done. Jaap has been a key supporter of the U.S. in his five-and-a-half years at NATO. He leaves a strong legacy to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who will succeed him on August 1. Jaap,s early insistence on getting NATO,s first major out-of-area mission in Afghanistan right evolved into a more general interest in increasing the Alliance,s clout on an array of global issues and working in concert with global partners, including with countries in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Gulf, and the Asia-Pacific region. As he has often said, we don,t want a global NATO, but we do want a NATO with global partners. During his time here, Jaap took a leading role in trying to transform the Alliance. Today, no Ally calls into question the urgent need for rethinking NATO,s strategic goals. Jaap has never accepted economic challenges as an excuse for the Allies to underfund their defense capabilities or contributions to NATO,s operations. He correctly urged our friends in Europe to acquire more capabilities like transport aircraft, helicopters, intelligence and reconnaissance assets, and to broaden the scope of NATO common funding. He also refused to accept the argument that European contributions to EU operations precluded contributions to NATO ops. More recently, Jaap fought hard to hold the Alliance together over Russia. He pushed for pragmatic NATO cooperation with Moscow on issues of practical common interest -- like Afghanistan, counter-piracy, counter-narcotics -- while using the NATO-Russia Council to push back in areas where we have differences, like Georgia and the CFE Treaty. -------------- U.S. Strategic Goals for NATO -------------- With Jaap,s departure at the end of the month, and Rasmussen,s accession as the new Secretary General, we are entering an important new phase in the Alliance,s evolution, which will conclude with the next NATO Summit meeting in Lisbon in late 2010. The United States has five significant strategic goals for the Alliance to achieve by the time you and your colleagues meet in Lisbon. First, NATO must become more effective in preventing crises and conducting operations that enhance the security of the Allies at home. Most important, we must demonstrate real progress in Afghanistan by the time of the Lisbon Summit, including through enhanced security of the Afghan population and a steady transfer of responsibility for security, governance, and the economy to the Afghans themselves. Continued NATO engagement, focused mainly on securing the Afghan population through continued troop deployments and training and sustaining Afghan army and police, will be crucial to that effort. Second, we need to strengthen the transatlantic relationship and NATO itself must nourish nascent global partnerships. One critical element of that effort must be to forge a new framework for improved cooperation between NATO and the European Union, the two preeminent organizations in Europe. USNATO 00000314 002 OF 003 With France,s reintegration into the military structure of the Alliance, years of competition between NATO and the EU can and must make way for complementary deployment of both organizations in critical security operations in Europe and beyond. We should aim to secure agreement on a new framework by Lisbon. We also must forge consensus on a pragmatic, interests-based approach to Russia that fosters regional peace and security, and a new enlargement compact that strengthens Alliance solidarity. Third, we must pressure the Alliance to meet emerging security challenges, including cyber-attacks, terrorism and piracy, weapons proliferation, and threats to natural resources and energy. While NATO,s Article V commitment of collective defense remains the bedrock of the Alliance, the nature of the threats to Allied populations is evolving in this age of global politics, and so must NATO,s ability to defend against these new challenges. This will require new, more agile defense capabilities, as well as new ways of thinking about threats, deterrence, and defense. Fourth, we must transform and bolster Alliance defense capabilities, which continue to be insufficient to meet the demands of the world we live in. NATO needs to be able to deploy more forces to greater distances and more rapidly than it can do at present. That will require not only more resources, but also a more efficient use of the resources that are being expanded on defense in many European countries, with more going to research, development, and procurement and less to static forces and bloated personnel budgets. It will also require a greater commitment to procure and employ common assets, such as NATO,s Strategic Airlift Capability program in which a number of countries pooled resources to procure C-17 transport planes, the first of which will arrive at Papa Air Base in Hungary next week. Another example would be a NATO decision to pursue a territorial missile defense capability against an Iranian nuclear and missile threat that would integrate various national anti-missile capabilities into a commonly funded and operated missile defense command and control system. Finally, we must foster a sense of common purpose within the Alliance as a whole. For the United States and other Allies, the decision to engage in a far-off corner of the globe will require better public diplomacy on why protecting stability and enhancing security there, often at great costs in lives and other resources, are necessary for security at home. Similarly, it will be important to explain why early action is necessary in order to prevent conflicts or mitigate their consequences before they get out of hand and how expanding partnerships, more diplomacy, and greater collaboration between NATO and other countries and organizations benefits the security of all. A new generation of people, born when the Cold War ended, will need to be convinced that NATO remains as central to their security as it was to their parents, security. -------------- The New Alliance Strategic Concept -------------- Each of these strategic goals will form an essential part of the effort to draft a new Alliance Strategic Concept by the time of the Lisbon Summit. You and your colleagues assigned the task of drafting this new Concept to the Secretary General when you last met in Strasbourg/Kehl, and the effort is just getting underway. Jaap hosted a very successful seminar in Brussels earlier this month to kick off the deliberations. Nearly 400 participants, including NATO Perm Reps and officials from Partner countries as well as senior military officials and the next generation of think-tankers, discussed the state of the Alliance, the nature of the security environment, and the way it can operate most effectively in the years ahead. As one of his first acts as Secretary General, Anders will appoint an expert working group to assist him in the effort of crafting the new Strategic Concept. Our nominee for the group, Madeleine Albright, has been asked to chair the effort, a challenge she is more than happy to take on. The Albright group will engage in wide-ranging consultations USNATO 00000314 003 OF 003 within the Alliance and beyond and prepare the basis for drafting the new Concept next year. We will remain closely involved in this process to help ensure that this new Concept charts the best possible and most comprehensible course for a new Alliance to deal with the new realities of the current century. Through his tenure at NATO, Jaap has laid a strong foundation for achieving all of our strategic goals and crafting a coherent new concept for the Alliance. When you thank him for a job well done, you can assure him that we intend to work with his successor to take this agenda forward. ¶3. (U) End text. DAALDER