Afghanistan, which is almost as large as Texas, has fewer U.S. troops (34,000) than New York City has police (35,800). Asked if NATO, which will celebrate its 60th birthday in 2009, might die from its cumulative futilities in Afghanistan, Gates is acerbic: Afghanistan is the "top operational priority" of NATO, "which must never forget that it is a military alliance, not a talk shop." He says NATO nations other than America have approximately 2.5 million people under arms but protracted wheedling is required to get even 10,000 more for Afghanistan, and they come encumbered with "caveats" that cripple their usefulness.
Still, he thinks there will have to be American boots on Afghanistan's soil for many years because it would be "very difficult" to use "offshore" operations -- special forces, cruise missiles and other airstrikes -- to prevent the country from again becoming an incubator of terrorist capabilities. Noting that the first attack on the World Trade Center was in 1993, he says: "We paid a price quickly for turning our backs on Afghanistan after 1989." For that, he says, he shares the blame.
Asked what worries him most, he unhesitatingly answers with one word: "Pakistan." That nation's western region seethes with threats to the regime, and there are groups that hope terrorist attacks such as those in Mumbai can, like the assassination in Sarajevo in 1914, spark a conflagration.
Still, he says he used "an unfortunate phrase" when he recently said that the world in 1970 was "amateur night" compared to today. He meant that although Henry Kissinger deftly handled three simultaneous challenges (Syria attacking Jordan, turmoil in Lebanon, the Soviets building a submarine base in Cuba), back then crises "had a beginning and an end." Today's festering crises, from North Korea to Kosovo, "come up on the table and don't go off." Fortunately, Gates' experiences in the cauldron of crisis are as impressive as the provenances of his desks and tables.