Panetta argues for staying the course in Afghanistan

Panetta is in Brussels to talk Afghanistan with the allies. Amid the spate of insider attacks and criticism from President Hamid Karzai, Panetta and Gen. John Allen, the ISAF commander, are attempting to smooth all the ruffled feathers among NATO defense ministers. Panetta told reporters traveling with him that the U.S. and ISAF generally have put measures in place to minimize the chances of more insider attacks, which have frayed nerves and undermined the U.S.-Afghan military bond.

"He’s going to forcefully say to allies that insider attacks are a challenge, but this enemy tactic will not deter us from moving forward on successfully implementing the transition strategy," a senior defense official told Situation Report.

The official tells Situation Report that Panetta will discuss a number of other topics at the defense ministerial in Brussels, including NATO capabilities, nuclear issues, and the Kosovo mission. But Panetta recently told FP that world affairs require the U.S. to walk and chew gum at the same time. That’ll be necessary even in Brussels as the situation in Syria demands U.S. and NATO attention. The head of NATO reiterated early this morning that the alliance would defend Turkey if the spillover crisis reached a certain point.

"We have all necessary plans in place to protect and defend Turkey if necessary," Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said before defense ministers met in Brussels.

Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of Situation Report where we’re always on the hunt for allies. Follow me @glubold or hit me anytime at gordon.lubold@foreignpolicy.com. Sign up for Situation Report here: http://bit.ly/NCN9uN or just send me an e-mail and we’ll put you on the list.

The take: the Romney speech on foreign policy offered few details but exploited the bounce the GOP contender has enjoyed coming out of last week’s debates. But while many a pundit scrutinized his speech, there was one item largely overlooked: the suggestion that he’d have better luck than his predecessors convincing European countries to spend more of their GDP on defense.

Romney: "I will call on our NATO allies to keep the greatest military alliance in history strong by honoring their commitment to each devote 2 percent of their GDP to security spending. Today, only 3 of the 28 NATO nations meet this benchmark."

FP’s Blake Hounshell: "If you believe that, then I have a bridge in Bruges to sell you!" he wrote. True, European countries have been slow to pony up a lot of cash, and the Libyan campaign last year pointed that up. But what does Romney think he can do differently from other American leaders who have pushed Europe on this issue for years? "In the middle of a never-ending economic crisis — at a time when the likes of Britain, Greece, Italy, and Spain are implementing what you might call European-style austerity programs — is Europe really going to cough up a few more percentage points of GDP on Mitt’s say so?" http://bit.ly/c0RI4a

Romney’s remarks: http://bit.ly/VFEbVL

Actually, it is rocket science. The real "reset" between the U.S. and Russia should come in the form of true cooperation on missile defense, argues Celeste Wallander on FP. She says that one of the most "persistent misunderstandings" about missile defense is that Obama scrapped Bush 43’s plans for missile defense in Europe to appease Russia. Not true, she says. "Indeed, when I was briefed on the plans for EPAA in the summer of 2009, I told my colleagues in the Defense Department that I expected Russia to like EPAA even less than the previous plan, precisely because its flexibility and the larger number of interceptors would fuel nightmare scenarios in the Russian General Staff. Unfortunately, my prediction has been proved right." she wrote. (By the way, the Russian word sotrudnichestvo = cooperation.) http://bit.ly/TcHduD

The contradictions of John Lehman are self-evident, says Gordon Adams, writing on FP, after a Defense News interview over the weekend in which the former Navy secretary — possibly on a short list as defense secretary in a Romney cabinet — argued for more ships (15 a year for a 350-ship Navy) and an additional aircraft carrier wing. "He didn’t offer any justification for this Navy expansion (perhaps a former secretary of the Navy doesn’t need to)," Adams writes. But he also ducked how he would pay for it, says Adams, skirting a central problem among those grappling with defense spending: bloat. http://bit.ly/Rc72vl

Are there no terrorists left in the U.S.? That could be why DHS can’t find any, says John Mueller, who sifted through the Senate’s recent report that found problems with Homeland Security’s intelligence "fusion centers" but then "amazingly," as he puts it, concluded DHS should get more money to support them. But Mueller, who edited a book on case studies of Islamic extremist terrorism in the U.S. and abroad, wonders aloud if "any [italics his] of the billions of dollars added to counterterrorism policing since 9/11 has been all that necessary." And while many would-be terrorists since that time had grand ambitions, he says, almost all were "incompetent, ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic, ignorant, inadequate, unorganized, misguided, muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, moronic, irrational, and foolish." He says that many of the plots that were thwarted by U.S. counterterrorism officials were actually in the process of being abandoned by their plotters. http://bit.ly/VSD8QV

Nukes could cost as much as $661 billion over the next decade, according to Ploughshares, a disarmament group, even while it acknowledges that estimating the cost of nuclear weapons is fraught with difficulty. E-Ring’s Kevin Baron looks at the new report. http://bit.ly/SZSLS1

Are Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE a Trojan horse? Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican from Michigan, and Dutch Ruppersburger, a Dem from Maryland, think so. They released a report that encourages American network providers to use other vendors and suggests the U.S. should investigate unfair trade practices, especially "illegal Chinese government subsidies" to the two companies and other firms. Killer Apps’ John Reed writes that the two lawmakers weren’t forthcoming about providing evidence of the telecom companies’ wrongdoing but cited two American employees of the firms who provided them some details in what they said was a year-long investigation. http://bit.ly/Qa2LbW

Twelve Years and Counting

• AP: Panetta seeks to reassure allies on insider attacks. http://bit.ly/WLKsNE
• Reuters: Taliban shoot Pakistani school girl campaigning for peace. http://reut.rs/QQrRyZ
• Xinhua: Kabul rejects report that Afghan government could collapse after ISAF withdrawal. http://bit.ly/TdQ7Ia
• AP: First female rapper appears in Afghanistan. http://bit.ly/QcmlEt
• Inter Press News Agency: How the U.S. quietly lost the IED war. http://bit.ly/VVpjkK

Monday morning in Libya

• Daily Beast: Cables showed there were threats. http://bit.ly/SWBlWw
• Reuters: U.S. diplomatic security unit under scrutiny. http://trib.in/PRMS8q
• CNN: Libya challenges ICC to hand over Saif Gadhafi. http://bit.ly/SP5EOd
• The Guardian: Democracy is messy in Libya. http://bit.ly/QbLHCi

Noting

• Ynet: Ahmadinejad hails Chavez victory. http://bit.ly/Qc3U2y
• USA Today: Mexican navy reports drug cartel head Heriberto Lazcano killed in fighting in northern border state of Coahulla. http://usat.ly/PkAkfn
• NYT: Rebels clash with Syrian security forces near Lebanon. http://nyti.ms/RK4V4m

Hardware

• Bloomberg: EADS, BAE heads plan merger talks today. http://buswk.co/SIY9wC
• Reuters: Progress on EADS, BAE merger as deadline nears. http://reut.rs/QQx9L0
• The Telegraph: BAE and EADS shares unsettled by deal’s collapse. http://bit.ly/WLXpHi