Major Garrett to Interview NATO Secretary General After Obama Meeting

President Obama meets at the White House today with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the administration seeks a new strategy for Afghanistan that could include the deployment of up to 40,000 additional US troops.

Vice President Biden will join the Obama-Rasmussen meeting on the eve of the first of five top-level meetings Obama will convene at the White House with his national security team.

Rasmussen will brief Obama and Biden on the appetite among NATO members to press ahead in Afghanistan. The White House wants to retain existing NATO backing and broaden it if possible - especially when it comes to combat operations , training Afghan Army and police forces, and boosting development assistance. All 28 NATO nations have some forces in Afghanistan. Twelve NATO partner nations also have deployed some forces.

To see the nation-by-nation troop footprint as of July, read here:

After the meeting, Obama and Rasmussen will make a brief statement to White House reporters in the Oval Office. There are no plans to take questions.

Senior White House Correspondent Major Garrett will interview Rasmussen after his meeting with Obama. See that interview tonight on Special Report with Bret Baier.

In a speech in Washington Monday, Rasmussen said he shares Obama's view of the dire stakes in Afghanistan.

"I have no illusions," Rasmussen told the Atlantic Council in his first major US speech on Afghanistan policy. "None of this will be quick, and none of it will be easy. We will need to have patience. We will need more resources. And we will lose more young soldiers to the terrorist attacks of the Taliban. But I fully agree with President Obama when he says that this is not a war of choice, but of necessity. It is obvious that if we do not succeed, Afghanistan will again be a terrorist camp. Pakistan – nuclear armed Pakistan – will be severely destabilized. Extremism will spread fast into Central Asia, and then to Europe. That is simply the reality."

Read Rasmussen's full speech here:

The five White House meetings on Afghanistan will debate the wisdom of sending more US forces to Afghanistan, the mission those war-fighters would pursue, the length of that deployment and how to measure military success in a 12-month to 18-month window, according to senior officials.

But those decisions are only part of the Afghanistan puzzle. The White House also wants to see how it can augment diplomacy, humanitarian relief, and economic development. Obama has long said a military-only approach is doomed in Afghanistan.

One complication, at this stage, is the messy presidential election that appears to have returned incumbent Hamid Karzai to office for a second 5-year term. Massive voter fraud may force Karzai to submit to a run-off election, or severely weaken his political standing if narrowly re-elected in what is widely viewed as rigged process. An international and national review panel is determining the scope of voter theft and may rule by week's end if a run-off  is necessary.

"I don't know if anybody could have anticipated the scale of the fraud that was carried out on election day and after election day (and) some of it even before election day," Karin von Hippel, an Afghan election observer with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Fox. "There are credible estimates (of) up to 1.3 million votes that are fraudulent. That would bring Karzai down to well below the 50-percent-plus-one he needs to avoid a second round."

As NATO nations and many in the US (latest polling data here) question deeper military involvement in Afghanistan, one of the core issues is the legitimacy of Karzai's apparent re-election and the government he would oversee in its aftermath.

"What are we fighting for and dying for if it's just another corrupt government that's in place," von Hippel asked. "A credible Afghan government is really the most important piece to our exit strategy and to turning things around on the ground."