Hagel also questioned NATO's usefulness later in the speech.
"All these [international] institutions that were built after World War II throughout leadership " now 65 years later of course they cannot be the same institutions," Hagel said.
"I just mentioned a couple minutes ago NATO as a good example. There is no Soviet threat and you all remember in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down and "89, "90, "91 the Soviet Union imploded, the great question in the Congress, in Europe, was, "Why do we need NATO? What was the point on NATO?' " Hagel said. "And we essentially parked that question. We never answered it, and instead we said, "Well lets enlarge NATO,' so we enlarged it."
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