Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

30 May 2003

GENERAL JONES

• Reuters writes that Gen. Jones, talking today to reporters at SHAPE, said the NATO Response Force could be up and running with 5,000-6,000 troops by October, a year ahead of schedule. He is further quoted saying the elite force, proposed by the U.S. last year to adapt the Cold War Alliance for new security threats, could be a tool to move NATO away from a tradition of defensive reaction to crisis prevention. Gen. Jones reportedly said the NATO Response Force could grow to 15,000 or even 25,000 but the “tip of the spear” would be a small number of expeditionary troops geared for short, sharp conflicts. “By October we want a proof of concept force so people can see what it’s like…We’re integrating air, land and sea capabilities with built-in sustainability packages, something we just haven’t done before,” he is quoted saying. If the NATO force had existed on September 11, Gen. Jones furthermore is reported saying, the U.S. would not have had to cast around for individual allies to take its military response to Afghanistan. In the end Gen. Jones reportedly said he wanted the initial elements of the NATO force to be Europeans to demonstrate that, despite the transatlantic gulf in military capability, they were up to it and he also said it could be used for EU crisis management operations.

TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS

• Poland is today hosting President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, writes The Independent, for visits that mark the start of a crucial 10 days for a country divided between its loyalty to America and its desire to take its place in Europe. President Bush will deliver an address near Krakow while Prime Minister Blair is making a speech in Warsaw, adds the newspaper. According to the newspaper, the arrival of both leaders in Poland comes only eight days before Poles begin voting in a referendum on membership of the EU where the 50 percent turn-out is needed to give the vote legal force. Recent opinion polls however, notes the daily, suggest support for EU has increased to more than 65 percent. With the war now over, argues the newspaper, Poland has begun its effort to rebuild its ties with France and Germany by reinvigorating the so-called “Weimar triangle”, the forum in which the three countries use to meet. However, Poland’s Minister for Europe Danuta Hubner reportedly said that Warsaw was determined to maintain its transatlantic ties, particularly on defense. “We would be very hesitant about creating in Europe any structure that could undermine or undercut NATO…We think that could have very bad global consequences,” she was quoted saying. Mr. Radek Sikorski, Poland’s former Deputy Minister for defense and foreign affairs, in a contribution to the Wall Street Journal reportedly stated that by helping to get NATO members to agree to use the Alliance’s assets to plan the layout of the Polish sector in Iraq, Poland gave France and Germany a face-saving chance to soften their opposition to the U.S. operation in Iraq. Mr. Sikorski believes that the visit to Krakow is not only about Poland, but about Europe and Poland, like other Central European countries, would like the EU to develop in harmony with the U.S.. Joining NATO (to which most EU members belong), he stressed, was supposed to be the end of the Polish geopolitical dilemmas, not the beginning of new ones.

IRAQ

• A Reuters dispatch cites a USA Today article stating that the number of peacekeeping troops U.S. allies are pledging to the postwar effort in Iraq has fallen short of Pentagon expectations. Diplomats and military officials, under condition of anonymity, reportedly said that the U.S. and Britain have received promises of just 13,000 troops from the two dozen countries, far fewer than the tens of thousands of peacekeepers U.S. planners want. Pentagon officials had purportedly hoped to begin substituting some U.S. troops with troops from other countries as early as next month when they had expected to send home most of the Army’s Third Infantry Division.
  
  
• According to an AP report, the Bulgarian Parliament approved a plan Thursday to send up to 500 peacekeepers to Iraq. The report adds that Bulgaria, which was invited to join NATO in 2004, strongly supported the U.S.-led war on Iraq. The Balkan country opened its airspace and provided an air base for U.S. military during the war and, remember the dispatch, Bulgarian troops have been involved in peacekeeping operations in Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan.

ISAF

• An AFP dispatch reports that Lord Robertson insisted on Thursday that there was no disagreement between the military Alliance and Spain over this week’s plane crash in which 62 Spanish peacekeepers died. The crash had sparked angry claims that the plane was unsafe, with questions being asked about the roles played by the Ukrainian operator, the Spanish government and NAMSA, the NATO Maintenance and Supply agency. “I don’t think that it helps anybody to start pointing fingers of blame at the moment, when what was being used was one of the workhorses of that part of the world,” Lord Robertson is quoted saying. Spanish Defense Minister Trillo, adds the report, had defended the use of the plane by pointing out that it was covered by NAMSA. Nevertheless, observes the dispatch, Spanish press later quoted NATO spokesman Yves Brodeur as saying that NAMSA had no safety role and did not inspect planes, generating the Spanish Defense Minister’s complaints. Lord Robertson, concludes the report, affirming that the NAMSA agency “does its job…correctly and efficiently,” stressed that NATO had not sought to contradict the Spanish Defense Minister.

U.S. TROOP BASING

• The realignment plan would mean drastic changes for the European continent and the troops stationed there, says an article from the Los Angeles Times. The Pentagon wants to reconfigure American bases overseas, setting up small outpost on the territory of new allies such as Bulgaria and scaling back in long standing host nations such as Germany, argues the newspaper. Deputy Commander of the U.S. European Command, Gen. Charles Wald, is quoted saying on this issue, referring to the sprawling bases, such as those of Ramstein and Heidelberg: “We’re not going to build any more little Americas…We’ll get smaller.” Troops the newspaper writes, would rotate through these new bases every three months to one year and in peacetime these bases could run with skeleton crews. But plans for the exact look and size of the new overseas U.S. armed forces have not been finalized, notes the daily. Gen. Wald also reportedly said that while Central Europe is by now prosperous and stable and in no need any more of a large U.S. military presence, Eastern Europe is instead desperate for development and a chance to enhance its stature through ties to the U.S. military. U.S. officials, concludes the daily, say that while tens of thousands of troops in Germany may be shifted to Eastern Europe, thousands more may wind up in Africa, which is becoming a more and more strategically important area.