Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

08 August 2003

ISAF-NATO-GENERAL JONES

• Ahead of NATO’s takeover of ISAF, an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal looks at the Alliance’s future against the background of statements by Gen. Jones. “Written off earlier this year as the first victim of the debacle over Iraq, NATO Monday moves into Afghanistan. For the first time in its 54 years, the Alliance will act outside Europe, marking a historic as well as strategic watershed,” the newspaper observes. While acknowledging that “we’re not ready to proclaim the trans-Atlantic rift healed,” the article stresses that new facts on the ground suggest that the Western democracies that won the Cold War together are facing up to this century’s greatest security challenges. Against this background, the newspaper continues: “Gen. Jones tells us the Alliance ‘is transforming itself (into) a global organization.’ The general says the old defensive grouping needs to learn to be ‘proactive,’ able to deploy forces quickly anywhere in the world to tackle emerging threats rather than just respond to an attack.” The article considers, however, that “there’s still a way to go,” noting: “The Europeans first must push for a long-overdue overhaul of their militaries, still structured for a different era. The recent creation of a (NRF) has focused continental minds on modernization. With 2.5 million personnel in uniform, Europe needs as much to spend its defense euros better as it does to spend more.” Concluding, the article suggests that the logical next step for NATO, after Kabul, is Baghdad: “The Alliance quickly pacified Moslem Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, and this summer helped the Poles put together their multinational contingent for Iraq. NATO isn’t the feckless United Nations. It’s a successful military organization whose supreme commander, incidentally, answers to the U.S. president. As long as a NATO mission in Iraq isn’t allowed to become a Trojan horse for any … plan to bring back the Baathists, its deployment would demonstrate that the leading democracies of the world again stand united. No stronger message could be sent to any other Saddam Husseins or Osama bin Ladens.”
  
  
• German media continue to focus on the suggestion by Defense Minister Struck that ISAF’s mandate may need to be expanded beyond Kabul. Duesseldorf’s Handelsblatt, Aug. 7, called for a prompt clarification as to whether, where, and how the Bundeswehr will expand its mission to the Afghan provinces. “The more intense the debate becomes, the clearer it gets that there is no alternative to an expansion of the mission,” said the daily, adding: “There are two reasons for this: One is inherent in the situation in Afghanistan itself: right from the start, limiting operations to Kabul was not suitable to achieve the goal of a unified state. The other reason is to be found in Germany’s domestic policy: across party lines, there is the declared unwillingness to send the Bundeswehr to Iraq. Afghanistan seems to be the lesser evil in this respect. Because German foreign operations are like communicating tubes: if the commitment decreases at one place, an increase is requested at another…. Germany’s absence in Iraq, or a restriction of its commitment to reconstruction, will not be free of charge. In return, Germany has to commit itself to another dangerous area of operation: Afghanistan.”

UNITED STATES-TROOP BASING

• U.S. experts are conducting negotiations about deploying a U.S. military base at a closed-down military facility near the town of Gotse Delchev in southern Bulgaria, reported Sofia’s Pari, Aug. 7. Defense Minister Svinarov has informed the local municipality leadership of this. U.S. experts are also inspecting two other sites for military bases: the Ravnet airfield, the shipyard in Varna, and the Atiya port, added the report.

BALKANS

• According to the Financial Times, senior diplomats say the EU will beef up its role in police training in the Balkans as most of the region increasingly sheds its dependency on large, international military forces and moves slowly to state and institution building. The article claims that with more than 12,000 NATO-led troops still in Bosnia, up to 25,000 in Kosovo, and a few hundred in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, there is a growing agreement among senior European diplomats on the need to have professionally trained police forces capable of providing security. The latest police initiative by the Europeans, adds the newspaper, will be focused on the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, where earlier this year the EU launched its first military mission as part of its security and defense policy. EU diplomats working in the Balkans are quoted saying it is time to shift the emphasis in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to police reform, in particular, integrating the police forces, improving training and overhauling the judiciary and penal system.