Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

03 March 2003

GENERAL JONES

• According to AFP, Gen. Jones told reporters in Stuttgart Monday he was in intensive talks with the Alliance’s member countries about overhauling the U.S. military base system. He reportedly said he would visit all 19 NATO member countries and the seven Eastern European countries on the road to full membership by the end of July and planned to have a vision for transforming the base system in place by next March. Implementation would begin soon afterwards. Noting that Gen. Jones is also the head of US. forces in Europe, the dispatch quotes him saying: “The European Command literally stands at a crossroad between two centuries…. We need to respond more fully to asymmetric challenges.” Gen. Jones is further quoted saying Washington is interested in boosting cost efficiency and mobility with the new system to meet new threats. The dispatch stresses, however, that he denied the existence of a list of bases set to be mothballed, saying the planning was still in the “embryonic stage.” And he firmly dismissed reports that the plans were intended as a slap in the face for Germany, which has thousands of jobs relying on the maintenance of U.S. bases. “What this is not is a knee-jerk reaction to a political disagreement,” he reportedly stressed.

Reports that the United States may be planning a realignment of its troop basing in Europe continue to generate prominent attention.
Hard against Poland’s eastern border with Russia, about 100 miles out of Warsaw, Bidla Podlaska is tipped to become the new U.S. military headquarters in Europe if American forces relocated from Germany, claimed The Washington Times, March 2. The article, noted that Bidla Podlaska is equipped with a barracks for several thousand men and a hospital to treat frontline casualties and “its airfield would provide the perfect headquarters for the United States’ new army in … Europe.”
Under the title, “U.S. to stop military projects in Germany,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 2, wrote: “Fiercely denied previously, the reports are now official: The United States is stopping expenditures in the billions that were to have been invested in Germany. Now looms the move of many soldiers to Poland and Hungary. On Saturday, U.S. and German authorities for the first time confirmed the investment stop for U.S. military bases in Germany. As reported by the Trierische Volksfreund, planned construction of a $33 million hospital on the U.S. air force base at Spangdahlem in the Bitburg-Pruem district has been halted…. The land office in charge of real properties and construction, which on the German side is responsible for building the hospital, has also confirmed the U.S. investment cancellation.” Against this background, the newspaper quoted Defense Minister Struck quoted saying: “I talked about (U.S. troop basing) with my U.S. colleague, Donald Rumsfeld, at the Munich Security Conference. On that occasion, he told me that President Bush had ordered him long ago to review worldwide the U.S. Army’s concept of stationing troops. Current relations between the United States and Germany play no role in this.”

IRAQ

• The New York Times writes that under intense U.S. pressure, Turkish Foreign Minister Yakis indicated Sunday that his government would ask Parliament to vote a second time on whether to allow U.S. troops to use the country as a base for a military attack against Iraq. Yakis reportedly said the government would take a new resolution to Parliament later this week after the government completed an assessment of the first vote. AP reports meanwhile that talking to reporters in Stuttgart Monday, Gen. Jones said military officials are considering alternative plans if Turkey remains steadfast in its rejection of a U.S. deployment. “It’s very much a wait and see situation at the moment,” the dispatch quotes Gen. Jones saying. The dispatch adds that Gen. Jones, who participated in the 1992 operation to provide assistance to Kurdish refugees, said Turkey would be the ideal point to launch a similar humanitarian operation in a post-war scenario.
  
  
• Britain and the United States have all but fired the first shots of the second Gulf war by dramatically extending the range of targets in the “no-fly zones” over Iraq to soften up the country for an allied ground invasion, writes The Guardian. The article reports that as Baghdad threatened to stop destroying its Samoud 2 missiles if the U.S. presses ahead with its invasion plans, allied pilots have attacked surface-to-surface missile systems and are understood to have hit multiple-launch rockets. A related New York Times article quotes U.S. officials saying the attacks have been prompted by the deployment in recent week of Iraqi surface-to-surface missiles within range of Kuwait. Most of the world’s attention seems to be riveted on Iraq’s decision to yield to UN demands that it destroy its Al Samoud 2 weapons. But these missiles are not Iraq’s only missiles and they have not been the target of recent strikes. Rather, U.S. and British warplanes have attacked Iraq’s Ababil-100 missiles, Frog-7 rockets and an Astros 2 multiple rocket launcher, stresses the newspaper. According to a NATO official, it adds, NATO Secretary Robertson cited the deployment of the Ababil-100 during NATO’s private deliberations last month as he sought to persuade NATO to send AWACS radar planes and Patriot antimissiles systems to Turkey. The article observes that the air strikes are not being cast as just a means of enforcing the no-flight zones. Rather, the United States has justified them on the basis of UN resolutions that were meant to prevent Iraq from building up its offensive ability and threatening its neighbors.
  

ESDP

• The weekly European Voice, Feb. 27-March 5, reported that the Chief of the EU’s Military Committee, Gen. Haaglund, suggested in an exclusive interview that NATO and the EU’s defense tasks should be merged into one organization in which Europe and the United States each take care of defending their own areas. Speaking from a personal viewpoint, the general reportedly said the merger should occur “by the end of this decade.” At the end of the decade, he reportedly stressed, “it is likely that both the EU and NATO will have around 30 European members. As the vast majority will be the same countries, it will be difficult to have them doing the preparation for defense and crisis management in two separate organizations.” He suggested that the future defense body would have two pillars, each ensuring the security of its area but working together when they act outside their zones. The two blocs would be linked by a mutual defense clause and would defend each other if there was a threat of a conventional attack or use of nuclear weapons.
  
  
• According to The Independent, March 1, NATO’s role as guarantor of Europe’s security was challenged Friday when Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who is chairing the Convention on the future of Europe, proposed a mutual defense clause as part of a new EU constitution. According to the newspaper, Giscard said he would put forward the idea as part of efforts to bolster ESDP.
  

ANTI-TERRORISM

• The Daily Telegraph reports that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the senior Al Qaeda terrorist arrested in Pakistan was in U.S. custody Sunday as intelligence officials raced against time to discover what he knows. The newspaper argues that the next few days are crucial in uncovering the whereabouts of Al Qaeda cells in the West before they scatter or carry out major acts of terrorism in revenge for his capture. It also quotes Western diplomats saying there was a danger that Al Qaeda operations being planned could now be swiftly executed because agents would fear exposure as Mohammed was interrogated.

OTHER NEWS

• AP quotes President Shevardnadze saying in his weekly radio interview Monday that Georgia has launched its second anti-terrorist operation in the Pankisi Gorge, aimed at thwarting illegal military groupings and preventing transit by Chechen rebels. “Our main task now in the Pankisi Gorge is to preserve what was achieved last year. Georgia won’t allow the return of Chechen rebels to the Pankisi Gorge from Russia. We have enough forces to do that.” The dispatch adds that Maj. Gen. Shervashidze, the commander of Georgia’s Interior Ministry forces, told independent Rustavi-2 television Monday that no additional forces had been sent to the gorge. He reportedly offered few details of the new operation, saying only that existing checkpoints might be moved.