Latest news with #RobertGates
Bloomberg
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
What Worries Former Pentagon Chief Robert Gates
Never miss an episode. Follow The Big Take daily podcast today. Over many decades of public service, Robert Gates has served as secretary of defense for two presidents and the director of the CIA. On today's Big Take podcast, Gates sits down with host David Gura and shares his perspective on what makes this moment one of 'the most perilous' in history. It's the first of several interviews David did with some of the biggest names in foreign policy and national security at the Aspen Security Forum. We'll publish those conversations on The Big Take over the next couple of weeks. Listen and follow The Big Take on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Terminal clients: click here to subscribe.
Bloomberg
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Big Take: Former Defense Sec. Robert Gates Is Worried
Over many decades of public service, Robert Gates has served as secretary of defense for two presidents and the director of the CIA. On today's Big Take podcast, Gates sits down with host David Gura and shares his perspective on what makes this moment one of 'the most perilous' in history. It's the first of several interviews David did with some of the biggest names in foreign policy and national security at the Aspen Security Forum. We'll publish those conversations on The Big Take over the next couple of weeks.
The Hill
11-07-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Germany promised to double defense spending — now it must deliver
During the final two decades of the Cold War, many observers considered the West German military, the Bundeswehr, to be the most capable land force among the European NATO allies. Highly professional and extremely well trained, the German land forces, like the entire German military, benefitted from defense expenditures that by 1988 amounted to more than 3 percent of the country's GDP. And with an economy that was the largest in western Europe, West German defense spending was greater than that of all other NATO members, apart from the U.S., the U.K. and Turkey. The end of the Cold War resulted in a precipitous decline in defense expenditures on the part of a now-united Germany. Faced with the need to integrate the population of the former East Germany into its extremely generous welfare system, and with no clear threat to its security, Berlin's spending dropped below 2 percent in 1992 and continued to fall until it reached a low of 1.07 percent in 2005. The following year, at its Riga summit, NATO formally agreed that member states would commit to spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. German spending rose that year — but only to 1.2 percent. The paucity of German spending on defense manifested itself in the increasingly poor state of German military readiness. By 2010, the German Army's once-vaunted Leopard tanks were suffering from low availability, as significant numbers were in storage or maintenance. The Air Force's Tornado and Eurofighter aircraft were suffering from shortages of spare parts. The German fleet was aging, with few replacements and limited deployments. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates likely had Germany in mind when in 2011 he told his NATO colleagues that 'if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future U.S. political leaders — those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me — may not consider the return on America's investment in NATO worth the cost.' Even Russia's seizure and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and NATO's reaffirmation of its 2 percent goal at the Wales summit that year, hardly made an impression on German defense spending. Indeed, it took five more years for defense spending to rise to just slightly above 1.25 percent. Only after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 did the trajectory of German spending begin to change. Five days after the Russian invasion, German Chancellor Olof Scholz — in what came to be called his 'Zeitenwende' or 'turning point' speech to the Bundestag — announced that his government would 'set up a special fund for the Bundeswehr' with 'a one-off sum of 100 billion euro for the fund. We will use this money for necessary investments and armament projects.' He added that 'we will now — year after year — invest more than 2 percent of our gross domestic product in our defense.' Germany indeed hit the 2 percent mark early in 2024 and it will reach 2.4 percent this year. Scholz's successor, Friedrich Merz, elected in May after the Scholz government was defeated in the December 2024 election, announced an even sharper jump in German defense spending, thanks to a constitutional reform that will allow government borrowing above the previous rate of 0.35 percent of GDP. Three weeks ago, Merz committed Germany to more than double its defense spending by 2029, thereby reaching NATO's new target of 3.5 percent of GDP ahead of almost all the other European NATO allies. Merz's initiative is certainly welcome, but it is not clear that he will be able to follow through on his promises. The German public remains deeply concerned about Russia's ongoing aggression against Ukraine, and thus far does not appear to have responded negatively to the government's plans. Nevertheless, even with less restrictive constraints on government borrowing, Merz may find it difficult to maintain the generous social welfare regime that Germans have benefitted from for decades. Any cutbacks or modification of those benefits could spur a popular backlash against the planned defense increases. Moreover, the fact that Germany is expected to continue to purchase U.S. defense products — currently totaling at least $15 billion — at a time when America is extremely unpopular throughout western Europe may intensify that backlash. Whether the fledgling Merz government will have the fortitude to withstand popular pressure over the next several years is an open question. Hopefully it will, because Germany, once NATO's fulcrum in central Europe, will remain critical to the credibility of the alliance's deterrent against a Russia whose appetite for swallowing up its neighbors continues to appear insatiable. Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.
Wall Street Journal
20-06-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
We Can't Beat Beijing if We're Dependent on It
Robert Gates is correct that 'The U.S. Can Rise to the Chinese Challenge' (op-ed, June 14) by devising a national strategy using nonmilitary instruments. But we should give more than a sentence to the need for a dynamic, efficient and scalable U.S. industrial base. That machinery must be able to work with allies and partners to supply our needs and theirs with minimal dependence on China. Diplomacy, value promotion and economic tools like tariffs, trade agreements and export restrictions won't matter if the West can't manufacture its own needs.
RTÉ News
17-06-2025
- Politics
- RTÉ News
How has the approach to handling Iran's nuclear programme changed?
For decades, the international community has wrung its hands over Iran's nuclear programme, fretting over the Islamic dictatorship's potential to build a bomb. Strategies on what to do about it have largely bounced from sticks to carrots and back again with little agreement - to this day - on the best approach. Now Israel, with US support, has chosen the stick. So how did we get here? In testimony to the United States Senate in 1992, the then-director of the US Central Intelligence Agency Robert Gates said that Iran's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons could be a "serious problem" within five years or less. The US started pressurising and incentivising Iran's nuclear suppliers - Russia and China - to scale back cooperation with Tehran, which was largely successful. Iran insisted its nuclear development was for civilian purposes only. But, by the turn of the century, the International Atomic Energy Agency investigations into Iran's undeclared nuclear activities revealed traces of high uranium enrichment at a site in Natanz. And soon, the populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was threatening to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth". The US quickly imposed sanctions with the UN Security Council following suit in what would be the first of several rounds of punitive measures imposed by the UN, EU and individual countries. Israel called for the international community to keep the pressure on. Benjamin Netanyahu, then and now prime minister of Israel turned up at the UN General Assembly in 2012 with an illustration of a bomb depicting, he said, Iran's nuclear capability. "The relevant question is not when Iran will get the bomb," he told delegates. "The relevant question is at what stage can we no longer stop Iran from getting the bomb," he said. But then, in 2015, the mood changed. Then-US President Barack Obama oversaw a historic deal offering sanctions relief in exchange for Iran limiting its nuclear capabilities. Known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it won the support of major powers including all five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, UK, France, Russia and China, as well as Germany. Mr Netanyahu remained staunchly opposed. He said the deal "could well threaten the survival of my country and the future of my people". Far from blocking Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, he said, the deal paved the path to a bomb. Donald Trump agreed, and as president in 2018, he pulled out of the deal. Some analysts saw that as a costly move that prompted Tehran to redouble its efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon, away from the prying eyes of international inspectors. But others believed that Iran would have pursued nuclear capability regardless and agreed with Mr Trump that it was a "horrible one-sided deal". Nevertheless, by the time he came to power a second time, his intelligence chiefs appeared to have concluded that Iran was not, in fact, close to developing a nuclear warhead. In March, the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate hearing that the intelligence community assessed that Iran was "not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorised the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003". "We continue to monitor closely if Tehran decides to re-authorise its nuclear weapons program," she said. But last week as Israel began its assault on Iran's nuclear and military sites, Israeli officials framed it as a pre-emptive act of self-defence. "If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. It could be a year. It would be within a few months, less than a year". "This is a clear and present danger to Israel's survival," he added. In his remarks, Mr Netanyahu appeared to reference a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency that found Iran had enough uranium enriched to 60% purity – a significant step towards the 90% needed – to potentially make nine nuclear bombs. The body also declared Iran to be in breach of its non-proliferation agreements. But that should not be a pretext for military action, said Susi Snyder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. "If every country that was in noncompliance with its non-proliferation agreements - as cited by the IAEA - were bombed, we would have seen bombs blow up all over the planet," she told RTÉ News. "The reason that the IAEA reports is in order to alert the international community to enable a diplomatic solution not to be used as an excuse for attack," she said. But now that Israel has bombed Iran's nuclear sites, what happens next? Trita Parsi, Iran expert at the Quincy Institute, a think tank, expects that the Iranian leadership will be reluctant to engage in further negotiations to limit its nuclear capability. "Support for acquiring a nuclear weapon has surged among Iran's elite and broader society in response to the Israeli bombings," he said "This has raised the political cost for Tehran to agree to limit enrichment to civilian levels, making a deal more difficult," he added. The question now is whether Israel's strikes have dealt a decisive blow to Iran's nuclear ambitions. "Despite inflicting significant damage on the Natanz nuclear site, Israel has failed to penetrate the far more critical and heavily fortified Fordow facility," Mr Parsi said. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the IAEA, said the Friday attack destroyed the above-ground part of the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz, one of the plants at which Iran was producing uranium enriched up to 60%. However, he said there was no indication of a physical attack on the "underground cascade hall containing part of the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant and the main Fuel Enrichment Plant". Much of Iran's secretive programme remains underground. But this conflict is not over yet. World leaders are increasingly anxious to see a return to the negotiating table. President Trump said he wanted Israel and Iran to do a deal. And last night, European ministers reportedly held a call with their Iranian counterpart, urging Tehran to resume talks and refrain from escalating the conflict with Israel, according to Reuters. The international community may once again find itself having to choose between carrots and sticks.
