Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

11 February 2003

NATO

• Reuters quotes a NATO official saying NATO called off at the last minute a meeting of envoys on Tuesday to break a deadlock over preparations to protect Turkey in the event of a war in Iraq, deciding to try informal diplomacy first. “There’s so much informal consultation going on it was felt we didn’t need the meeting,” the official reportedly said. He indicated, however, that there would probably be a formal session of the NAC at 1530 GMT.
  
  
• The French Ambassador to NATO, Benoit d’Aboville, told the BBC Radio Four’s Today program, a show targeted at Britain’s decision-makers, that diplomacy must be given more time to defuse the Iraq crisis before making preparations for war, reports AFP. “What’s at stake is whether or not we give a little more time to diplomacy and to a process, a UN resolution, that we all agreed to at the Security Council. We are just saying that we should not take a line at NATO which is not consistent” with UN Security Council Resolution 1441 on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, the ambassador reportedly said.

Media focus on the current deadlock within NATO over Turkey’s defense, generally describing it as the worst crisis in the Alliance’s history.
The Guardian insists, however, that amid talk of NATO’s imminent disintegration, transatlantic trench warfare and the UN’s collapse into League of Nations oblivion, it is vital to stay focused on the issue from which the dispute directly stems: U.S. plans to wage war on Iraq. The article stresses: “This makes it even more important, not least for Britain, to agree an Iraq policy that most, if not all, can support. There is no dispute about the need for Iraq to disarm. The argument is about the best means to attain that aim. The U.S. and Britain must persevere down the UN route of intensified inspections, containment and diplomatic pressure. At present, this is a reasonable alternative to war. But it is also a unifying policy that most UN, NATO and EU states and most people can rally behind.”
The Independent observes that the international community is so badly fractured over Iraq that it is difficult to see how it can be patched together again. Yet, the newspaper adds, patched together it must be if NATO and the UN are not to be broken apart. The article concludes: “Longer term, there may well be a case for reviewing the future of NATO and the procedures of the UN security Council. Neither would seem to be an effective means of balancing competing interests and submerging disparate sovereignties now that the Cold War is over and conflicts are no longer frozen in Cold War confrontation. But to break either institution on this particular wheel would be madness.”
Noting that the Alliance has weathered similar strains before, the New York Times observes that despite the current tensions, Europe and the United States remain closely tied by culture, politics and economics. The newspaper quotes Richard Holbrooke, former ambassador to the UN and to Germany in the Clinton administration, saying: “What we have is a messy situation but not a crisis, because it is still fixable. But to fix it, Americans and Europeans will have to reach a new understanding that NATO has a vital role to play in the world today.”

Commentators continue to observe that the current deadlock undermines NATO’s credibility as well as its future role as agreed at the Prague summit.
Typifying this view, The Guardian writes that the row is badly timed for NATO after a year spent reinventing itself to meet the challenges of the post-Cold War and post-September 11 world. It is ironic, too, given the complaints that Washington excluded NATO from the war it waged in Afghanistan.

Reports in the U.S. media alleging that Gen. Jones is considering a plan to scale back the U.S. troops presence in Germany are generating prominent interest in European media.
Against the background of suggestions that the plans may be linked to the current debate over U.S. plans for war against Iraq, AFP reports a Pentagon spokesman said the U.S. military is engaged in “strategic thinking” about its military presence worldwide, but denied it was linked to the current dispute. “There are no plans on paper to reduce forces in Europe,” the spokesman is quoted saying and adding that the Pentagon’s long-term thinking on the subject “has no direct correlation to the current dispute … over potential hostilities in Iraq.”
The Pentagon’s spokesman remarks are also echoed in the Stars and Stripes.
The BBC reported, however: “Already there is talk that American disenchantment with ‘old Europe’ will accelerate American thoughts on reshaping its military role in Europe. According to the New York Times, American delegates on the plane carrying them home from a Munich security conference were talking with approval of a briefing they had been given by the new American commander in Europe, Gen. James Jones. He said that American forces in Europe might be cut from their current level of 100,000. There would no longer be so many major units stationed in Europe but equipment would be left there and troops flown in if necessary. Such a concept would retain the American commitment but it would also be seen as a loosening of its ties.”
In a similar vein, La Libre Belgique claims: “A new problem is emerging for Chancellor Schroeder. According to the New York Times and the Washington Post, the new SACEUR, Gen. James Jones has mentioned the possibility that the United States could redeploy their troops in Europe, reduce their number, make them more mobile and maybe even base them at a lesser cost in countries such as Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland or Romania.”
New York Times columnist William Safire makes a similar observation in an article reprinted in the International Herald Tribune.