Panetta speech at King's College, London

Panetta speech at King's College, London; - That's why I have made building stronger alliances and partnerships my top priority as secretary of defense, including NATO. It's also why I believe we have a window of opportunity to fundamentally reorient the transatlantic alliance to tackle the most pressing challenges that we are facing in the 21st century, and yet to be able to meet our fiscal responsibilities at the same time. I do not believe we have to choose between fiscal responsibility and our responsibility to national security. Let me describe three areas of focus that must be made if we are to bolster NATO and to confront the threats of the future. First, we must develop innovative alliance cooperation. It will be essential to finally move away from the Cold War approaches to meeting alliance security commitments and instead embrace cost-effective, innovative forms of defense cooperation that are tailored to meeting the most relevant security challenges that we face today and tomorrow. NATO can no longer be an alliance focused on a single type of mission, whether deterring the aggression of another superpower or conducting stability operations in Afghanistan. To be prepared to quickly respond to a wide range of threats in an era of fiscal constraint, we have got to build an innovative, flexible, and rotational model for forward-developed presence and training. For the United States, that means we are making significant adjustments to the European force posture consistent with our new defense strategy. Yes, it includes the downsizing of some of our less-relevant Cold War forces, such as the two heavy Army brigades that we removed from Europe. But let me be clear that this effort is not primarily about cuts. It's about reshaping our cooperation for the new challenges ahead. That means, even as we make some reductions, we will be supporting new rotational deployments, enhanced training, enhanced exercises, and other new initiatives that bol...