Nato’s global military role

• the broader and more intense political consultations at NATO on issues ranging from the Balkans and Afghanistan to Africa and the Middle East, and now also energy security;

• our growing operational commitments, in particular expansion in Afghanistan but also new categories of missions, such as support for the AU in Darfur and a major humanitarian mission in Pakistan.

• progress on transformation, to meet both old and new demands on the Alliance, including achieving full operational capability for the NRF, strengthening our access to strategic lift, and better funding mechanisms;

• the need to work more effectively with current partners and reach out to new ones, and in particular the importance of building in a pragmatic, strategic partnership with the European Union. This is essential for both organizations; and

• bringing these various themes together at the NATO summit in Riga next November.

[...] Opening the second day of the 42nd annual Munich security conference, a gathering that defense experts and policy-makers traditionally use for frank exchanges, Rumsfeld said violent extremism was a danger faced by Europe as much as the United States. He said Islamic militants were on the move and had to be checked.
[...]
"They seek to take over governments from North Africa to Southeast Asia and to re-establish a caliphate they hope, one day, will include every continent," he said. "They have designed and distributed a map where national borders are erased and replaced by a global extremist empire.

"Today our countries have another choice to make _ we could choose to pretend, as some suggest, that the enemy is not at our doorstep; we could choose to believe, as some contend, that the threat is exaggerated," he said. "But ... what if they are wrong?" ...

Rumsfeld pointed out that the U.S. spends 3.7 percent of its gross domestic product on national defense, while 19 of the 25 other NATO nations spend less than 2 percent of their GDP on defense.
[...]
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country was willing to be more active on the international stage, but warned that budget restraints would continue to limit defense spending.

She pushed Russia and China to join Germany and the U.S. in pushing Tehran back to negotiations, and said Germany's Nazi past meant it could never tolerate derogatory comments about Israel and the Holocaust by Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
A president that questions Israel's right to exist, a president that denies the Holocaust cannot think that Germany has even the slightest degree of tolerance," she said to applause. "We have learned from our history."

French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie backed Rumsfeld's call for more defense spending, calling it "indispensable."