By JOHN-THOR DAHLBURG Associated Press

BRUSSELS (AP) - When Anders Fogh Rasmussen took over at NATO, the alliance was struggling to contain a growing insurgency in Afghanistan, and some predicted it would soon follow its Cold War foe, the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, into the dustbin of history.

Five years later, as Rasmussen wraps up his tenure as the 12th secretary general in NATO's history, the U.S., Canada and their European allies are again squaring off against the Russians, and must confront a more diverse and bewildering array of threats to Western security than ever.

"We should be prepared to address all of them, whether it is a conventional threat against our territory, or what I would call hybrid warfare as we have seen in Ukraine - a sophisticated Russian mix of conventional military operations and information and disinformation campaigns - or terrorism as we see it in Iraq, or cyber-attacks or missile attacks," Rasmussen told The Associated Press in a farewell interview.

"All this is part of today's security environment and NATO must stand ready to protect our societies and our populations against all those threats," said Rasmussen.

The 61-year-old Dane's last day as the U.S.-led defense alliance's top civilian official is Sept. 30. In one of his last official acts, he was scheduled to deliver a speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on Tuesday.

On Rasmussen's watch, NATO continued to wage what has been the longest and most extensive military operation in its 65-year history in Afghanistan, a campaign that is supposed to come to an end this December.

"Rasmussen played a valuable role in helping convince NATO members to contribute additional forces to President Barack Obama's surge strategy," said Jorge Benitez, senior fellow for trans-Atlantic security at the Washington, D.C.-based Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. "This was a major accomplishment because the momentum had been for allies to decrease their commitments in Afghanistan."

Rasmussen, a former center-right prime minister of Denmark, was also in charge when NATO provided air cover to the rebel militias that brought down Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi.

An important lesson he drew from that conflict and the ensuing chaos, Rasmussen told AP, was that the international community must get involved faster when a repressive regime is overthrown, in order to improve the chances for a desirable and stable outcome.

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NATO's outgoing chief: 'We cut fat, built muscle" - NBC40.net