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> U.S. pledges $1B to boost military presence in E.
> Europe, urges NATO allies to boost funding
> [2014-06-03]
> 最新更新：The Washing Post June 3 at 8:00 PM
> 
> 引用日期：2014-06-04
> 引用連結：
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/hagel-p
> rods-europeans-to-pay-fair-share-of-nato-expenses/
> 2014/06/03/91dabc1e-eb29-11e3-b98c-72cef4a00499_st
> ory.html
> 
> 
> Source: Washinton Post / Reuters 
> 
> WARSAW — President Obama pledged his ironclad
> commitment Tuesday to the defense of Europe and
> proposed as much as $1 billion in additional
> spending to bolster the U.S. military presence in
> Poland and neighboring countries, part of a
> strategy to reassure nervous allies and check
> Russia’s encroachment into the region.
> 
> Standing beside Polish President Bronislaw
> Komorowski at the start of a four-day tour of
> Europe, Obama warned Russian President Vladimir
> Putin that he will face additional sanctions if he
> escalates the situation in Ukraine and urged him
> to take steps to resolve it diplomatically. “We
> have prepared economic costs on Russia that can
> escalate if we continue to see Russia actively
> destabilizing one of its neighbors,” Obama
> said.
> 
> On Friday, Obama and Putin are both set to attend
> a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of D-Day
> in Normandy, France. While French President
> François Hollande and British Prime Minister
> David Cameron have scheduled meetings with Putin
> outside the event, Obama has not.
> 
> “Mr. Putin has a choice to make . . .
> that’s what I’ll tell him if I see him
> publicly,” Obama said.
> 
> Even as he proposed new funding to reassure
> Eastern Europe and put Russia on notice, Obama
> also sought to send a message to other NATO allies
> farther to the West who have long resisted
> increasing their own defense spending.
> 
> As Obama spoke in Warsaw, Defense Secretary Chuck
> Hagel was lecturing his NATO counterparts in
> Brussels on “stepping forward . . . when
> their own security is threatened.”
> 
> “As President Obama asks the United States
> Congress and the American people to support
> increased investment in European security, we are
> asking our European allies to do the same,”
> Hagel said. Only a handful of NATO members meet
> the alliance benchmark of spending at least 2
> percent of their gross domestic product on
> defense.
> 
> The spending argument is not a new one, but
> administration officials from Obama on down
> believe they have a potent new argument in
> Russia’s Ukraine aggression, right at NATO’s
> doorstep. The alliance, they argue, needs to
> return to its first principles of defending
> itself, after two decades of operations far afield
> in the Balkans and Afghanistan.
> 
> Every alliance member “has to do its fair
> share,” Obama said. As NATO reconsiders its
> longer-term posture toward Russia, “it’s going
> to require some flexibility, some additional
> planning, some joint capabilities that right now
> we don’t have . . . and it’s going to
> require every NATO member to step up.” With the
> exception of Poland and the Baltic countries,
> “we have seen a decline, steadily, in European
> defense spending generally,” he said.
> 
> Earlier in the day, addressing a joint display of
> U.S. and Polish troops, Obama made the first of
> several reassurances about the U.S. commitment to
> the defense of the new democracies in Eastern
> Europe. “Our commitment to Poland’s security,
> as well as the security of our allies in Central
> and Eastern Europe, is a cornerstone of our own
> security, and it is sacrosanct,” he said,
> flanked by F-16s that are part of a joint training
> program between the two countries.
> 
> Eastern European leaders have been at the
> forefront of alliance arguments that Russia’s
> annexation of Crimea and its support for
> separatists in eastern Ukraine have fundamentally
> changed the security situation in the region and
> put other countries at risk.
> 
> “It is difficult not to notice that something
> has changed to the east of the borders of NATO,
> that again they’re having to do with the
> aggression with the use of armed forces against
> one’s neighbor,” Komorowski said during the
> joint news conference. “A few years ago it was
> Georgia. Now it is Ukraine, with a special focus
> on Crimea.”
> 
> The U.S. money proposed by Obama would cover a
> continuation, likely into next year, of temporary
> measures designed to send a signal to Russia and
> convince Eastern European members that NATO has
> their back. It includes ongoing land, sea and air
> deployments, as well as moving additional
> resources closer to the Russian border and
> providing additional aid to non-NATO members
> Ukraine and Georgia.
> 
> NATO defense chiefs, meeting in Brussels to draw
> up plans to be considered at the next alliance
> summit, scheduled for September in Wales, held
> lengthy discussions on whether and how to adjust
> their basic defense plans in light of Russian
> actions.
> 
> “For the last 20 years, we’ve been focused on
> operations outside of NATO states proper,” a
> senior U.S. diplomat said at the NATO meeting. As
> it began to contemplate the end of combat
> operations in Afghanistan, the alliance has been
> suddenly “confronted with a reminder” about
> its own defense that it has not seriously
> considered since the end of the Cold War, the
> diplomat said.
> 
> While alliance members have contributed to the
> temporary bolstering of defenses and protection of
> the newer members in Eastern Europe for which
> Obama proposed additional U.S. funding, the
> “conversation we’re only beginning to have
> today” the diplomat said, is what NATO needs to
> do over the longer term regarding Russia.
> 
> The relationship is now based on a 1997
> NATO-Russia partnership agreement in which the
> West agreed it would not have “substantial and
> permanent” troops and bases near Russia’s
> European borders. “It’s quite clear today that
> we have a different strategic setting” after
> Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the diplomat said.
> “Do we still have a partnership? Is the
> NATO-Russia  still viable,” or should NATO be
> adapting to a fundamental change on its eastern
> flank?
> 
> “There’s a lot of space between nothing and
> ‘substantial and permanent,’ ” the
> diplomat said.
> 
> In a news conference after Tuesday’s meeting at
> the two-day NATO conference, NATO Secretary
> General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said all members had
> helped protect Eastern Europe. He noted that over
> the long term, Russia’s defense budget had
> steadily increased while the overall defense
> spending of NATO countries had decreased by 20
> percent. “It’s unsustainable,” Rasmussen
> said. “What we have witnessed in Ukraine is a
> wake-up call. And based on that, political
> leaders, in particular in Europe, should review
> their defense spending.”
> 
> In a speech Wednesday, Obama will mark the 25th
> anniversary of Poland’s first democratic
> elections. Some Poles have expressed hope that he
> will issue a direct challenge to Russia and echo
> the spirit of past speeches by Presidents Ronald
> Reagan and John F. Kennedy at the Brandenburg
> Gate.
> 
> 
> Others doubt he will reach those heights, and some
> have questioned U.S. global leadership. Nobel
> Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa, who helped bring
> democracy to Poland and was its second president,
> told the Associated Press late last month that
> “the world is disorganized and the superpower is
> not taking the lead.”
> 
> Obama leaves Poland on Wednesday afternoon to
> travel to Brussels for a Group of Seven meeting,
> where Ukraine is likely to remain the dominant
> subject. He will overnight Thursday in Paris.
> 
> On Friday, after bilateral meetings with Cameron
> and Hollande, Obama is scheduled to attend and
> make remarks at D-Day commemorations at Omaha
> Beach in Normandy, paying tribute to U.S. service
> members who helped liberate France.
> 
> DeYoung reported from Brussels. Michael Birnbaum
> in Moscow contributed to this report.
> 
> 
> Complete Report, please refer to The Washington
> Post