U.S. warns NATO over spending cuts, security

BRUSSELS (Reuters) — The United States warned its NATO allies on Wednesday that sharp cuts in military spending on both sides of the Atlantic risked "hollowing out" the alliance in a way that could be devastating to U.S. and European security.
Ahead of his first meeting with NATO defense ministers, new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said NATO needed to learn the "lessons of the past" and avoid weakening their militaries by trying to maintain a force they can no longer afford.
The two-day NATO meeting comes as the 28-member alliance is close to concluding an air-and-sea campaign in Libya that saw Muammar Gaddafi overthrown without a single NATO casualty.
"After World War One, after World War Two, after Korea, after Vietnam, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, we made the mistake of hollowing out our forces. That cannot happen again," Panetta said in a speech to the Carnegie Europe think tank.
"Similarly, NATO nations need to send a strong signal of our determination not to hollow out this alliance," he said. "We need to use this moment to make the case for the need to invest in this alliance to ensure it remains relevant to the security challenges of the future."
NATO remains bogged down in a hugely expensive war in Afghanistan, where 10 years of Western fighting has failed to subdue a Taliban insurgency, and officials say the extra effort in Libya has exposed limits that must be addressed.
In the lead-up to a NATO summit in Chicago in May, alliance Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen wants members to identify projects in which they can cooperate to make best use of resources at a time of severe economic austerity.
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