Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

25 March 2003

NATO

• According to AP, the Chief of Poland’s armed forces, Gen. Piatas, met with Gen. Jones in Warsaw Tuesday and said Poland was prepared to deploy troops trained for chemical warfare protection as part of NATO’s contingency for Turkey’s defense. The dispatch adds that Gen. Piatas told reporters that President Kwasniewski could approve sending a 30-soldier platoon as soon as NATO decides where it wants to draw anti-chemical and biological units. The dispatch notes that Gen. Jones gave no indication when such a decision would be made.
  
  
• AP, March 24 reported that Germany and Belgium warned Monday that a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq could force NATO to review its mission to boost the country’s defenses against a possible Iraqi attack. According to the dispatch, the two countries said a Turkish invasion of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq would compromise the defensive basis of NATO’s deployment of AWACS surveillance planes and other specialist units to Turkey. “This NATO decision was taken with certain conditions. If these conditions were to change … that would have consequences for us,” the dispatch quotes Foreign Minister Fischer saying.

Suggestions by Germany and Belgium last weekend that a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq could lead them to pull their military from the multinational crews manning four NATO AWACS in Turkey continue to generate reactions in German media. Amid opposition charges that the Federal Government’s threat undermines NATO, some media criticize Berlin’s refusal to let the Bundestag vote on the AWACS mission.
It is clear that the decision taken by the DPC to send Alliance AWACS to Turkey is exclusively a measure of mutual assistance for an allied partner that considers itself threatened. The text of the decision clearly refers to the consultations within the NAC requested by Turkey in accordance with Article 4 of the NATO Treaty and mentions a “preventive stationing” of the AWACS under the command of the SACEUR to defend Turkish airspace. Any mission going beyond this clear mission would not be admissible, writes Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, adding: “Maj. Gen. Dora, the German Commander of the AWACS fleet, is meticulously intent on the four aircraft, which are now flying patrols around the clock from the Konya air base, not doing anything that could be seen as support of the military intervention of the U.S. and the British in Iraq. Since last week, when Turkey agreed to letting the United States use their air space for military operations, the NATO AWACS have been maintaining contact with the U.S. aircraft crossing the air space they survey. However, they are not allowed to pass operational information to these aircraft. This task is supposedly carried out by U.S. AWACS that also fly at an altitude of 10,000 meters like the NATO AWACS. The AWACS operation is thus clearly restricted to NATO’s so-called traditional task, the defense of an allied partner.” The article considers, however, that “by doing so, the Alliance clearly shies away from the self-perception of a new NATO announced at the Prague Summit last November, that is to create an instrument for operations throughout the world with a rapidly deployable ‘Response Force’ equipped with modern weapons systems.” Suggesting that by threatening to withdraw German servicemen from the multinational crews in case Turkey becomes a party to the war, the government hopes that it can keep up its image of sticking to its principles as well as avoid a more fundamental debate in the Alliance, the article concludes: “The fact is that a non-participation on the German side—with Germany providing 38 of the 110 crew members of the AWACS fleet, important supply facilities, and last but not least the Commander, Maj. Gen. Dora, would mean the end of the mission in Turkey. At least this is the conviction held at SHAPE. A withdrawal of the German soldiers would in so far mean the end of the consensus on the stationing taken on Feb. 16.” In its March 24 editions, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung charged: “The coalition is very proud of the fact that it has done everything to prevent this war. Nevertheless, it should get used to the fact that its efforts have failed and the continuation of its previous strategy to prevent the war now just harms itself and Germany’s allies. By threatening a unilateral withdrawal from Turkey, it mainly hurts NATO. And by refusing to let the Bundestag vote on a crisis mission of the Bundeswehr, it undermines an elementary right of parliament. Both together is too high a price to save a coalition.”

IRAQ

• In a news conference carried live by CNN, Prime Minister Blair, who is flying to America Wednesday for talks with President Bush, told the Iraqi people: “This time we will not let you down.” He stressed that the coalition was doing its best to get humanitarian aid to the people of Iraq and dismissed Iraqi claims that Britain and the United States were stopping UN-supplied food and medicine from getting through. “It is not military action which created the humanitarian crisis. It was already there, it’s been there for years,” Blair said, adding: “Up to 400,000 children under the age of five in central and southern Iraq have died through malnutrition and disease.”
  
  
• Against the background of the war in Iraq, Belgian media highlight that ahead of the May elections, the ruling coalition is undergoing pressure from majority parties, notably on the left by the Socialist and the Greens parties over the transit of U.S. military equipment through the country. The Socialist Party (PS) said Monday it was in favor of canceling a secret convention, signed in 1971, linking Brussels and Washington for the transit of military equipment, reports Le Soir. According to the newspaper, party leader Elio Di Rupo has sent a letter to Prime Minister Verhofstadt requesting that the issue be put on the agenda of a restricted ministerial council meeting Wednesday. “We are asking the prime minister to launch a negotiation process with the United States. Belgium cannot remain with its hands tied,” the newspaper quotes Di Rupo saying. De Standaard, March 24, observed that in an accordance with a 1971 agreement, Belgium is obliged to authorize weapons transports. It stressed that cancellation of the agreement can only be made after a six-month notice.

The impact of the war on transatlantic relations remains at the center of media interest.
Under the title, “Viewing U.S. as critical ally, Germany tries to mend ties,” the Wall Street Journal quotes German government officials saying that although Germany formally opposes the war in Iraq, it still views Washington as its most important ally and has already begun efforts to repair the ruptured ties between the two countries. The officials reportedly stressed that from parliamentary prayers for U.S. soldiers and their families to doubling the humanitarian aid budget for post-war reconstruction, Berlin wants to show that the two nations share common interests despite the transatlantic problems of the past weeks. Reinhold Robber, a Social Democrat who heads the parliamentary defense committee, is quoted saying: “Right now there is no communication between the two countries. But the U.S. is still our most important partner, and we have got to get relations back on track…. If they won’t come to us, we’ll go to them.” Karsten Voigt, chief coordinator of U.S. issues in the German Foreign Ministry reportedly stressed meanwhile: “For Germans having a stronger Europe is not an issue of defining itself against the U.S. but of being a serious partner for the U.S. It’s not a concept of becoming another pole to balance a unipolar world revolving around the U.S.” The article adds that to show its good faith, Germany intends to strengthen the role of NATO in rebuilding Afghanistan and to play an important part in a post-war Iraq. In addition to humanitarian aid, Germany could send logistics and communications specialists to Iraq. Even German peacekeepers in the region could be considered, the newspaper quotes unidentified German officials saying.

In a contribution to the Wall Street Journal, Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio views differences within the EU over Iraq.
At the root of some countries’ position, particularly in France and Germany, appears to be the desire to play the role of counterweight to the U.S. on the world stage. This desire to set up a rival pole and offer the world an alternative to US. power sometimes takes priority over any other link with the U.S. and even leads to confrontation on the international stage, Ms. Palacio writes and adds: “It has been the states traditionally at the ‘core’ of European reconstruction that have chosen to emphasize the role of balancer on the geostrategic stage, while the continent’s ‘flanks’ (Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy and the new Central and Eastern European partners along with Romania and Bulgaria, candidates for membership) have defended solidarity with the United States. Our argument has been that international stability must be dealt with above and beyond hypothetical exercises in worldwide equilibrium. This group of countries thus believes that the EU must adapt to the new international framework and give itself the resources necessary to project forcefully an identity of its own. This identity cannot, however, be built on an opposition to the U.S…. The disparity of opinions with the EU, NATO and the UN Security Council has damaged these organizations’ credibility and limited their room for maneuver. However, there no ‘points of no return’ in politics, and our mission at this time is to lay the foundations of an international community able to act decisively and consistently through the multilateral institutions it has created—institutions that continue to be essential even in the present, radically changed strategic environment.”