BRUSSELS – Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday that he wants both NATO and the alliance to contribute more to the fight against the Islamic State.
“I’d like to see NATO do more,” he said after a two-day defense ministerial in Brussels that wrapped up Wednesday. “I believe there’s still more NATO can do as I believe there’s more each of us as individual nations can do to hasten the destruction of ISIL.”
Defense leaders used the summit to talk about NATO stepping up its contributions to the fight against the Islamic State, including sending more trainers to Iraq and providing surveillance from the air with the airborne warning and control system, or AWACS.
Both proposals are still under consideration, but a senior NATO diplomat said on Wednesday that he expected them to be approved by the Warsaw Summit in early July. Carter said both would be welcome additions to the coalition’s current capabilities.
While most of the NATO member nations already contribute to the counter-Islamic State coalition, Carter said there are some capabilities that NATO would be especially good at providing, like logistics support.
Carter told reporters on the way to Brussels that he also intended to ask his fellow defense ministers to increase their nations’ individual contributions to the coalition against the Islamic State.
“And we need to do more, not only as individual nations, but as an alliance. The sooner we defeat the ISIL cancer at the source, the safer we will make our homelands and our people,” he said in a closing press conference before heading back to Washington.
