Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

19 February 2003

SACEUR

• Local daily Nord Éclair reports that the Mayor of Mons, Elio Di Rupo, invited Gen. Jones to the City Hall Tuesday to explain Belgium’s position regarding Iraq. “Iraq may well be thousands of kilometers away from Mons, the city is nonetheless concerned by the current polemic regarding a possible attack. One of the reasons for this is the presence of SHAPE on the local territory,” notes the daily, quoting Di Rupo saying: “It was mainly an opportunity to transmit an important message. In fact, I wanted to explain to Gen. Jones that the decision made by Belgium Monday must not be seen as a green light to the dynamic of war, contrarily to what has been said in the international press. It is anyway not the position of the Socialist Party (PS), which considers that any decision must be made in the framework of the UN. Belgium remains opposed to this crusade against Iraq, while remaining a loyal NATO partner.” According to Di Rupo, Gen. Jones seems to have understood the message rather well, adds the daily, further quoting the Mayor saying: “I have the feeling that Gen. Jones, because of his cultural background—he spent 15 years in France—has a better understanding of our way of thinking than other U.S. officials.” Di Rupo reportedly also dismissed as “ridiculous” suggestions that the United States may be tempted to withdraw some interests from Belgium. “This is a ridiculous threat. The United States must not forget that we are partners even if we are (a small country). It is not because we have disagreements that NATO must leave Brussels and SHAPE must leave Mons,” he concluded. La Province carries an identical article under the headline, “Di Rupo meets the Commander of SHAPE.” Related information was carried by RTBF-1 television, which showed Gen. Jones in the company of Di Rupo.

NATO

• NATO Wednesday brought to a close one of the stormiest chapters in its history, approving the deployment of defense equipment to Turkey which fears counter-attacks in the event of a war in Iraq, reports Reuters. The dispatch notes that the decision was made by the DPC, in which France does not sit. It quotes diplomats saying the United States and some other NATO members sought a statement welcoming the move at a meeting of all 19 allied ambassadors later, but retreated quickly when it became clear that France was prepared only to “take note” of it. One NATO official is quoted saying that “defensive measures will now be implemented as a matter of urgency.” AP reports that in an interview with Associated Press Television News, NATO Secretary General Robertson stressed that “We’ll move ahead very quickly. Turkey will get what it asked for and what it needs.” But, adds the dispatch, it was unclear when the AWACS would leave their base in Geilenkirchen. Unidentified officials are quoted saying, however, that it would take only two or three days for the multinational crews to prepare and fly down to Turkey once the orders came.

In interview with several newspapers, including The Guardian, La Libre Belgique, the Wall Street Journal, El Pais and De Standaard, NATO Secretary General Robertson admitted that NATO’s credibility has been damaged by the bitter row over defending Turkey in case of war with Iraq, but stressed he wants to mend the fences.
Lord Robertson ensured that the request for aid to Turkey was not an attempt by the United States to draw the Alliance into the Iraq crisis, writes De Standaard. “According to NATO reports, Saddam Hussein has moved ballistic missiles toward the border with Kuwait. According to top NATO officials, this could mean that Iraq is playing with the idea of a preventive attack,” notes the newspaper, quoting Lord Robertson saying: “This was the issue, not the United States’ interests.”
La Libre Belgique quotes Lord Robertson saying, in a similar vein: “The Chairman of the Military Committee had told us there was a risk that Iraq would carry out a (preventive) strike on its neighbors …. The Supreme Allied Commander Europe wrote to me to warn me on the configuration of the forces in Iraq, including the deployment of some of their ground-to-ground missiles.”
Lord Robertson rejected as “completely crazy” complaints that he had mishandled the Turkey issue by forcing an unnecessary confrontation with NATO’s “gang of three,” writes The Guardian, adding: Intelligence briefings by NATO’s top military showed Iraqi deployments might indicate the danger of offensive action by missiles with chemical or biological warheads.
A related Wall Street Journal article focuses on Lord Robertson’s remark that “damage has been done to some extent to our credibility, to relations between the United States and other countries,” but “I think we can rebuild the faith in the Alliance and the speed at which it can take decisions. The Americans by and large will come to the conclusion that it takes a bit of time if an issue is controversial to get NATO to sort itself out.”
In an interview with El Pais, reports Reuters, Lord Robertson said the row had harmed NATO’s credibility and hurt U.S. relations with some Alliance members. But he played down the seriousness of the dispute. “If there is a conclusion to be drawn from all this, perhaps it is that there were too many expectations of a rapid solution. But it’s been exaggerated. We took 11 days (to reach agreement)…. The UN Security Council took 42 days to approve Resolution 1441,” Lord Robertson was quoted saying.

In a contribution to Le Figaro, Feb. 18, Charles Zorgbibe, Sorbonne Professor, reviewed France’s sideline position in NATO in the wake of the DPC’s agreement on Turkey’s defense, arguing that Paris’ return to the military structure could contribute to a Europeanization of the Alliance.
“The decision by the DPC to provide Turkey radar planes and anti-missile missiles goes far beyond its technical subject …. It shows us that, for the first time in the history of the Atlantic grouping, France’s marginalization is under way,” Zorgbibe observed and concluded: “France’s return to the integrated military structure could contribute to the Europeanization of the Alliance. In the medium term, there could be a dual objective: to build a European political group within the Alliance, with the European allies expressing themselves ‘with one voice’ and to create the conditions for a European command, on the assumption of a crisis management without the involvement of substantial ground forces of the United States.”

Looking at transatlantic differences over Iraq, the New York Times suggests that all the analysis about the cultural differences between Europeans and Americans—about Europeans being less reliant on force and more willing to sacrifice their sovereignty—boils down in practice to this: European governments believe in the UN as the “center of world order” and the American government, especially the current American government, tends to be hostile to that idea.
The public opinion polls, showing such clear opposition in Europe to a war, ring of this same conviction, stresses the article, commenting: A poll published in German weekly Der Spiegel showed 53 percent of the German public believing the United States to be the greatest threat to peace in the world, while only 27 percent cited Iraq. But the 53 percent are probably not saying that they prefer Iraq to the United States. What they are saying is that their greatest fear is of a superpower untrammeled by an international control. They would rather do nothing about a dictator like Saddam Hussein, who, in the European view, is too weak and hemmed in to be of a threat in any case, than see the United States act without UN approval.”