Military

NATO

¨         According to the BBC World Service, Russian newspapers on Saturday welcomed the NATO Prague summit's acknowledgement that Moscow no longer poses a threat to world peace but said they saw numerous problems in the organization's enlargement.  Among these were trans-Atlantic tensions, the relative weakness of the new recruits, and an increased risk of military conflict.  Government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta reportedly hailed the invitation to the former Warsaw Pact members and Soviet republics as marking "the end of the Yalta era that divided Europe into two hostile camps."  However, it continued, "given the new recruits' real resources, NATO resembles more a large political club than a military alliance."  The daily also considered that transatlantic tensions simmered beneath the "family portrait." Despite all the attempts to suppress their differences on a range of crucial issues, the Americans and Europeans failed to reach agreement," above all on Iraq, said the daily.  It also noted that NATO had ceased to be a purely defensive bloc. At Prague, it had given itself the right to wage preventive wars beyond its own borders.  The daily considered this was  clearly a factor that increases the risk of military conflict.

Media are assessing the results of the Prague summit. Several highlight that post-Prague, NATO is even more an alliance built according to an American blueprint.

"NATO is now entirely dominant.  It includes virtually all the most powerful and prosperous countries on earth.  Unlike the UN, it can be relied on-no matter how unenthusiastically at times-to do what Washington wants.  When the UN is reluctant to help, NATO will now be an even larger, more impressive policy tool for the U.S," wrote the Sunday Telegraph, Nov. 24.

More important than the success in Prague Thursday and Friday, writes the Wall Street Journal,  are the signs that the Bush foreign policy team is getting its arms around the all-important existential question of how best to put the Alliance to work in a brand new security environment.  "The important thing is that now there is U.S. leadership and a sense of purpose, coupled with a willingness to listen to allies," stresses the article. 

Describing the "metamorphosis of NATO," Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Nov. 23, wrote that at Prague,  a new security alliance has emerged that is not at all as the Europeans picture it.    There is no question that the new NATO can be strong, because the superpower heading it is strong. But turning this argument on its head, it is also true that never before has it been so clear that the Alliance is making its significance, its military and its political weight, dependent on the contribution from the United States, the daily observed. 

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nov. 23, suggested that through the establishment of a new reaction force, the acquisition of new military capabilities, and the renewal of its leadership and command structures for these deployments, NATO is fitting its own structures into those of the United States.  This restored the military cooperation capability between NATO and the United States, which had largely been lost after the end of the Cold War and the United States' re-equipment to meet emerging dangers.  In the new constellation, U.S. predominance is even greater than it had been up to now, the daily continued. 

Several media point out that Prague marked the end of the "old NATO."

Typifying this view, the Wall Street Journal writes that the Atlantic Alliance was reborn last week, when seven former Soviet bloc nations were asked to join.  Prague was an affirmation that a military alliance of democracies is not an anachronism today, says the article, adding:  "NATO has leadership again.  It has a roadmap of its own devising-even if the roads aren't exactly paved. It's now up to NATO's members, both old and new, to go follow that roadmap to a more secure world order."

Echoing the view of several media that the summit was a success story, the Sunday Times, Nov. 23, wrote:  "The summit was trailed as the last chance to transform the Alliance, and its planners did not disappoint.  Members signed up to 408 commitments to help convert heavy metals forces into a light and flexible fighting machine." 

In a contribution to the New York Times,  Michael McFaul, associate professor of political science at Stanford and a fellow at the Hoover Institution, stresses "that the military capacity gained for NATO from enlargement is minimal but the political returns will be fantastic."  Noting that more than any other institution, NATO has helped make Europe democratic, peaceful and whole, McFaul suggests that "a NATO for the Middle East and South Asia" might be a good game plan to have any success in creating what President Bush called a "balance of power that favors human freedom."  He continues:  "As the cliché goes, NATO brought peace to a war-torn continent by keeping the Americans in, the Germans down and the Russians out.  A NATO-like organization for the Middle East could keep the Americans in, dictators down and terrorists out.  It may be far-fetched, but so was the idea half a century ago that a western alliance in a ruined Europe would survive into the 21^st century and expand into the former Soviet Union." 

The Financial Times writes meanwhile that if NATO is to have a point for the U.S. it must be prepared to operate out of area-in regions such as the Middle East.  Claiming that "that is the difference the summit failed to resolve," the newspaper charges that  Prague has provided some sticking plaster but it has not provided the real glue needed to give the alliance cohesion and a sense of purpose.

The Washington Times highlights that the enlargement of NATO gives pressing urgency to the need to streamline and carefully re-examine the Alliance's top-level decision-making procedures.  A working group sponsored by the Stanley Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson International Center has recommended moving beyond consensus. Weighted voting is now entertained as a preferable method. In NATO, as in the EU, widening requires deepening.  NATO is a dozen years behind the EU in facing this problem, but it has one advantage:  it can change its procedures without having to make treaty amendments.  The NATO Council controls its own procedures, the newspaper says.

BRITAIN-DEFENSE

¨         According to Reuters, a dispute over a bitter strike of British firefighters, which is forcing soldiers to assume blaze duties rather than prepare for possible war against Iraq, has escalated into one of the biggest tests of Prime Minister Blair's rule and has revived memories of the 1978-79 "Winter of Discontent" when union militancy brought down a previous Labor government.  The dispatch notes that about a tenth of British troops have been drafted in to replace the firefighters, to the concern of defense chiefs who would rather be readying the military in case of action against Iraq.  It adds that the troops' lack of expertise and their use of slow, outdated military fire engines has left the public feeling vulnerable.

TERRORISM

¨         Russia said Monday a threat of new Chechen attacks inside Russia would only serve to boost a joint anti-terrorist drive by Moscow and NATO and would backfire on the rebels, writes Reuters.  The dispatch recalls that in an open letter Saturday, Chechen rebel leader Basayev threatened to stage new attacks against Russian strategic targets and urged NATO leaders to put pressure on Moscow to pull its 80,000-strong forces out of Chechnya.  It quotes Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin's top Chechnya spokesman, saying, however:  "Besayev's statement . will only help unite Russia and NATO in their efforts against terrorism." 

¨         Security at the Kleine Brogel air base in Belgium is inadequate.  Furthermore, procedures in case of a terrorist attack are quasi non-existent, writes Belgian daily Gazet van Antwerpen.   The daily bases its report on the result of a secret report by the U.S. army,  which has allegedly been obtained by a local television network.  According to the newspaper, the report flatly says that "nuclear security at the base is inadequate.  Personnel at the base are not sufficiently trained to react to a nuclear incident.  Checklists are outdated and there are virtually no procedures in case of a possible terrorist attack."