A Burdensome Bureaucracy

We have an urgent requirement in Afghanistan,General Craddock pointed out,that was 80 weeks to fulfillment.We got it down to 60 weeks;our goal is 35 weeks.There are urgent requirements on the ground.This is simply untenable.We cannot do this.NATO has no counter-piracy policy,either,though it has participated in individual operations.Internal guidance is slow.Parallel tracks for funding is a problem.We were unable to reduce the number of headquarters.We had to salami-slice each HQ to meet manning requirements.NATO and the European Union have to find opportunities to coordinate,sharing the burdens of procurement,counter-piracy and training.We have to get political direction to open those doors.For administrative issues,business issues,the routine business of the alliance,we need to move beyond consensus.The NATO Secretary General needs more authority for timely action.
I started as a lieutenant 37 years ago guarding the Fulda Gap.I am optimistic,but absent the balance,we may well face difficulties and problems in the coming years,General Craddock concluded.With his gray hair and spectacles,he had a grandfatherly quality as he quietly addressed The Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington,D.C.

Political Leadership Is Lacking

NATO nations have yet to source all of their operation plans,General Craddock noted.We need to balance national and alliance issues.Political leadership in NATO is AWOL,absent without leave.That is why,to a great extent,this imbalance exists.We are in operations;NATO has had to accommodate national interests.The problem is generated when,over time,the accommodations layer over top of one another.We've got 70 caveats.The accommodations have created regional fiefdoms in Afghanistan.They won't do anything else when asked by ISAF,the International Security Assistance Force.Friction in NATO is of a different nature now that we have our forces in harm's way.We're under a 1999 strategic concept.This strategic concept has to find a balance between the level of ambition and political will.We're manned at about 82% in the command structure.We need to know how to engage with the Russian Federation.This alliance is challenged internally and externally.There have to be agonizing reappraisals.We've got to get this one better than we have,SACEUR insisted.

Special Access:With the NATO Commander

General Bantz J. Craddock,U.S. Army,recently evaluated the state of the Western defense alliance,NATO,for The Atlantic Council of the United States,a foreign affairs study group.General Craddock will complete his tour as Supreme Allied Commander Europe,SACEUR,a post once held by Dwight D. Eisenhower,in July.We are making slow progress in a part of Afghanistan,the general said,but we are stalemated in the south and east.We cannot prevail until greater control is taken in Pakistan.Secondly,the narcotics industry in Afghanistan is supporting the insurgency there.Governance is the critical path.If it fails,we fail.It's up to the Afghan people.Unless they see government as a positive factor in their life,we fail.We build;the Taliban extremists destroy,because they know they will lose if governance succeeds,General Craddock explained.