Gates blasts NATO, questions future of alliance

America's military association with Europe — the cornerstone of U.S. security rule for six decades — faces a "dim, if not dismal" future, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in a rounded valedictory address.

In his final policy talking as Pentagon chief, Gates questioned the viability of NATO, saying its members' penny-pinching and lack of political will might hasten the end of U.S. support. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 as a U.S.-led bulwark alongside Soviet aggression, but in the post-Cold War era it has struggle to find a purpose.

"Future U.S. political leaders - those for whom the Cold War was not the formative knowledge that it was for me - may not consider the return on America's asset in NATO worth the cost," he told a European think tank on the last day of an 11-day overseas journey.

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NATO Aims to Rattle Qaddafi With Increased Airstrikes, Attacks on Compound

NATO is increasing airstrikes against Muammar Qaddafi’s forces and select targets closer to the Libyan leader in an effort to break a military stalemate between loyalists and rebels, military officials said.

U.K. Defense Secretary Liam Fox said this week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization strike that compressed part of Qaddafi’s main complex in Tripoli was meant to “increase the psychological heaviness” on the Libyan dictator. Fox met U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates yesterday in Washington.

The attacks on the multifaceted will make Qaddafi “realize that this is a little that he is involved in -- and I think that’s very significant in terms of the force we can bring on the regime itself,” Fox said on PBS’s “NewsHour.”

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Gates calls for limited role aiding Libyan rebels

The U.S. should keep away from developing a closer association with Libyan antagonism forces, guard leaders said Thursday, telling an often hostile Congress that overseas nations have got to now take over air strike everyday jobs and any effort to train and give the rebels.

By means of the U.S. role in Libya at a rotating point, the next critical decision is how, if at all, the U.S. chooses to hold up the opposition forces, particularly in the face of the ongoing monetary plan crisis at home. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he is opposite to arming the rebels, a step his boss President Barack Obama has not lined out.

Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said it was time to turn the mass of the divergence more than to NATO.

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U.S. sees North Korea becoming direct threat, eyes ICBMs

North Korea is attractive a through danger to the United States and might enlarge an international ballistic projectile within five years, desk of security Robert Gates said on Tuesday.

The most modern U.S. evaluation of the missile threat available by Gates in the capital of North Korea's merely ally, China appear to confirm projection the American intelligence group of people first issued in 2001.

Gates praised Chinese labors to decrease tension on the Korean cape excluding also worried the need to rein-in the isolated state, which has twice experienced nuclear devices.

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