motherjones.com
Where to, NATO? - gathered in Colorado Springs
Fri Oct 10 14:34:02 2003
64.140.159.26

October 10, 2003

Where to, NATO?
http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/41/we_557_05c.html

All 19 NATO member states and the seven new members to join next year gathered in Colorado Springs over the past two days. It was the largest NATO meeting ever, which is one sign of the changing nature of the alliance. But as ever, the subtext was how to keep the alliance, which was formed to counter Soviet communism, relevant in a world of new threats, new power dynamics, and new enemies -- most notably terrorists.

The meeting comes at an interesting time, with the rift between the U.S. and four NATO member states (Germany, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, famously labeled by Donald Rumsfeld as "Old Europe") about the U.S.-driven war on Iraq casting a long shadow over the gathering.

MSNBC thinks that the meeting is largely an attempt to find common ground in order to keep together an increasingly fragile alliance:
"American officials are eager to downplay the bitter rift over Iraq, which persists in spite of predictions that it was, like past frictions inside NATO, just a passing storm. But the upbeat characterization Rumsfeld offered to the media ignores problems that continue to bedevil not only the alliance, but also WashingtonÕs ability to win the U.N.Õs seal of international legitimacy for the post-war occupation. The problems date to February, when the administration realized its argument that Iraq posed a threat that warranted a war had failed to convince most of its NATO allies. The Bush administration gambled that a quick victory in Iraq and a relatively friendly and smooth post-war transition would make the strident opposition of France and Germany, and the consequent failure of the U.N. Security Council to sanction the war, look like a huge mistake. ...

This prediction has not been borne out by events. Indeed, if anything, the position championed by France has only gained support at the United Nations as the much advertised weapons of mass destruction remain elusive and attacks on coalition forces continue. ...

So deep is the rift over Iraq that the post-war situation is not officially part of the meeting agenda. But, in the dinners and cocktail hours that punctuate these kinds of gatherings, it will certainly be discussed. Rumsfeld has refused to say whether the U.S. might renew its request for more NATO help in Iraq. So far, such requests have been directed to individual nations, not to the alliance as a whole."

For the moment, the specific role and function of the alliance remains unclear. NATO's significance is open to question, given that the United States spends more on its military than all other NATO members combined, and that the U.S. has time and again demonstrated its willingness to go it alone. Generally the U.S. acts, while NATO watches.

Commenting on the meeting, the BBC notes:
"NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson, issued a stern warning to NATO members that had to do more to create "usable" forces for future crises, rather than what he called "paper armies". ...

[Donald Rumsfeld] also returned to a familiar theme that, far from not getting much help from Nato over Iraq, the United States had 11 of its allies alongside it in the country, with another about to join, and six out of seven of the NATO invitees.

But that's still not quite the same as the alliance as a whole participating, although it is providing some support. And Iraq, like the Rockies, is still casting something of a shadow over this meeting."

Rumsfeld, whom most of his European colleagues view as an iron unilateralist, sought to portray himself as a firm backer of NATO, one who wants the alliance to assume a greater role in maintaining global security. Central to this undertaking of reshaping NATO is the development of the new NATO Response Force (NRF), which will change the alliance fundamentally from a defensive force to one that can dispatch troops and equipment quickly to any point on the globe. Much emphasis was placed on the necessity of "agile decision making" to achieve quick consensus, with troops on constant stand-by ready to be deployed instantly.

At the nearby Schreiver Air Force Base all delegates gathered for an unique seminar (that officials reluctantly described as a 'war-game'), simulating a crisis-response drill for the planned NRF. Entitled "Dynamic Response 07," the demonstration enacted a bio-warfare attack on a fictional Mediterranean island named "Corona" in 2007.

The Washington Post elaborates on the 'war-game':
"In the attack scenario, the terrorists unleash chemical and biological weapons that threaten to "spill over" and harm civilians on the European mainland. "This is the type of asymmetric threat that NATO is likely to face in the future," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said." While the gentlemen inside were playing war, ouside there were demonstrators, who took to the streets of Colorado Springs to show how they felt about the military organization, reports the Washington Post:
"Even in Colorado Springs, a politically conservative town with a large military population, the NATO ministers and defense chiefs were hounded by protesters everywhere they went. Some of the demonstrators seemed to be against war in general, while others focused specifically on the war in Iraq. "Rummy lied -- our soldiers died," read one sign. The protesters were kept two blocks away from the Broadmoor Hotel, because of 'security concerns'. The local chapter of the ACLU is considering filing a legal challenge on the grounds that the protesters' First Amendment rights were violated.

Adding to tensions within the alliance caused by Iraq, there came a visit by the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. Just before the NATO meeting, the Russian Defense Department has issued a report saying it feels threatened by NATO's current course. Whereas NATO's founding goal was to keep the Eastern Bloc on its side of Europe, the organization will now encompass seven countries that were formerly located behind the Iron Curtain (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia). Russia, which obviously always had tensions with NATO, is now feeling threatened by this expansion of the pact into some of its neighboring countries. The Defense Department's report states that if NATO remained a "military alliance with its existing offensive military doctrine," Russia would have to overhaul its military posture and nuclear strategy. In return, NATO member states are concerned about the stance of their former Cold War foe. The Russian daily, Pravda, thinks that Russia threatens no one and that the country hopes that "direct and indirect anti-Russian components [will] be removed from the NATO military-planning process, as well as political declarations of NATO countries."

In an interview with the Asia Times, Aleksandr Pikaev, an arms control expert at the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations, clarifies Russia's position:
""We can explain the harsh tone very simply. Russia is concerned by a lot of things. NATO, which has announced it is battling international terrorism, has nonetheless expanded to Russia's borders. There is no evidence that NATO's doctrine is changing. In addition, it appears American forces are going to be moved from their German bases further east and all this causes great alarm among the Russian military and the president is forced to take those concerns into consideration," Pikaev said." AP reports that by the end of the Colorado meeting, both sides agreed to more cooperation and Russia was sounding more conciliatory. "They do not regard NATO as being an offensive organization, they regard NATO as a partner,'' said outgoing NATO secretary general Lord Robertson. Summing up the event, he added: "NATO will leave Colorado Springs with a new comprehensive program of work that will include an end-to-end review of decision making, an overhaul of a force generation process, and a range of new output measures to increase usability across the board."

No decisions were made on the extension of the Afghanistan operation, the first NATO mission outside of Europe, but not its last; NATO is set to widen its sphere of operations and responsibility far beyond the North Atlantic region. The move to modernize NATO, which includes radical changes in both technology and tactics, will most likely take a long time and cost billions. At the organizations next formal meeting in December, the current secretary general will be succeeded by Dutch Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who will steward the alliance through a defining, and decisive, period in its history. .

NOTES:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3177796.stm
-----------------------------------

Searched news for NATO. Results 1 - 10 of about 5,480

• Nato warned about 'paper armies' — Nick Childs, Fri Oct 10 14:41
• NATO thanks Russia for intelligence information on Afghanist — newsfromrussia.com, Fri Oct 10 14:56