WASHINGTON — Robert Gates calls it "aging out." He's not referring to his imminent retirement as defense secretary. He's talking about a generational expiration date on the American embrace of Europe as a pillar of U.S. defense strategy.
Gates made a splash with a scathing speech last week in Brussels, home of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in which he said the 62-year-old alliance faces a "dim, if not dismal" future. He was not disowning NATO but warning that a years-long fraying of trans-Atlantic ties could eventually break the bond.
"I am worried," he said in an Associated Press interview in his Pentagon office on Monday.
Throughout the Cold War, beginning with NATO's founding in 1949 as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and its East European allies, a military and political partnership with Western Europe was fundamental to U.S. defense policy.
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