(credit:  nato.usmission.gov /  Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison U.S. Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

By Gary Raynaldo    DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison said the COVID-19 pandemic thus far has not had any negative impact on the cohesiveness and solidarity of the military alliance and that it is prepared for a second wave. 

“We’ve seen the first wave; we are now in the second wave, and NATO has had a plan put in place since June for the Defense Ministerial before in which we would share the trust funds and the in-kind contributions of NATO allies to help each other as we go through what appears to be a second wave.  So I think we are in the process of doing that, and it is a high priority for us.”

-U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison

Ambassador Hutchinson made the remarks during a virtual press briefing Wednesday in Washington D.C. ahead of meetings of NATO Ministers of Defence  Thursday October 22 to discuss issues affecting Alliance security.   The COVID-19 pandemic will be high among security issues discussed.  Hutchinson added:  “First of all, we are all dealing with COVID-19, and I am really pleased that the ventilators that the U.S. has put into our planning and our stockpile that we knew would have a second wave of CO VID-19 to face, and we in fact think we are facing that right now, and our ventilators are being distributed as we speak to Albania, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.  So I think this is just one small part of the enormous interest in our all collective help for our allies in this COVID-19 pandemic.” 

In April 2020, early on in the pandemic  NATO Defence Ministers agreed on next steps to take in the fight against the Coronavirus at a virtual meeting  of the North Atlantic Council in Brussels. “COVID-19 represents an unprecedented challenge to our nations,”  NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg  said at a press conference following the meeting.  Stoltenberg said all NATO Allies are affected by the pandemic. The NATO chief pointed out that the coronavirus must not detract from the Alliance’s other security threats and challenges. Stoltenberg stressed that security challenges have not diminished because of COVID-19, and that, on the contrary, potential adversaries would look to exploit the situation to further their own interests.

Increases in Defense Spending by all NATO  Allies

“We are really pleased to see that 10 of our allies will now show that they are contributing 2 percent of their gross domestic product to their own defense spending that will allow NATO to have better and bigger capabilities, which is our collective defense.  We’re pleased that we are seeing this go in the right direction.  We still have a lot of work to do, but since the last six years, I guess, we have increased spending by our European and Canadian allies by $130 billion, and we know that that is going to continue to increase through the year 2024.”

-U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison

On IRAQ  and  AFGHANISTAN:

“Certainly, in Iraq we are supporting the new government there and working with Mr. Kadhimi to try to help him set up a government and eventually have elections for Iraq.  And in Afghanistan we are supportive of the Afghan-led peace talks that are now going on and looking forward to continuing in that effort to support the Afghans so that they will have a durable peace that will allow Afghanistan to flourish as a country and, certainly, not allow a safe haven for terrorists, which is one of the reasons we went into Afghanistan for all of our security in our alliance and in our partners.”  Ambassador Hutchison

“On the issue of Afghanistan, we have been consulting with our allies, and as of just last week we had the commander of our forces in Afghanistan brief our NATO council, our 30 ambassadors, on where we are with the previously briefed troop drawdown where we together have decided to go down to a lower number – 4,500 for America; approximately 6,000 for our allied troops that would be with us there – which is still able to do all of the training and advising that we are doing with Afghan forces who are out in the field fighting for the freedom of the Afghan people. “

On U.S. troop reduction in Germany:

“I don’t think there will be a reduction of troops in Europe.  I think there is an effort to begin to look at ways to make those troops more efficient by consolidating some of the headquarters in one place and having some of the troops in other places in Europe.  But I think the plans are going forward.  It will take certainly a lot of effort to decide how to move troops and making sure that there is an infrastructure that will allow a movement of troops.  So I think all of that is in the works.”

-NATO Ambassador Hutchison

On The status of U.S. troops in Eastern Europe:

“Well, we have announced that we have rotating forces in Eastern Europe.  That really came about after Russia took Crimea out.  They haven’t taken them out of Ukraine; they are still part of Ukraine. But Russia is now militarizing Crimea, and for that reason we must make sure that all of our allies on the Black Sea and elsewhere are protected.  So we have rotating troops, which we have been transparent about in our enhanced forward presence,our tailored forward presence, which includes the eastern allies – the Baltics, Poland, certainly Romania and Bulgaria – to make sure that the militarization of Crimea, which is very close in proximity to many of our allies, and the illegal attempt to take Crimea out of the Ukraine have caused us to require an enhanced presence that is not permanent-based, but it is a rotational level of forces to assure that we are deterring any further activities of Russia, and hope for the future that Crimea will come back to its rightful sovereign territory in Ukraine.”   –   NATO Ambassador  Kay Bailey Hutchison