Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

26 August 2003

ESDP

• Reports that Britain is to propose the establishment of a dedicated EU military planning cell at SHAPE are noted. Media speculate that the proposal will revive the debate on ESDP. Belgium’s De Standaard expects a dispute between countries which want planning for global European military operations to take place in the framework of NATO and the “gang of four,” Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and France, which in the spring advocated the establishment of a separate operational headquarters. In a related comment, Die Welt writes: “The Brussels summer recess is over and (Prime Minister) Tony Blair of all people has given the opening shot for a new round in the dispute over Europe’s defense identity. He wants to anchor a ‘EU planning cell’ in the military headquarters of NATO, thereby blocking those four states of old Europe which in the spring put forth plans for an independent European Defense Union and its own European general staff. A clever plan—since Blair wants to make into a permanent solution the ad-hoc model which the EU and NATO are already practicing in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: although the operation there stands formally under the flag of the EU, it falls back on NATO means and capacities and is led from NATO headquarters. Blair’s initiative is more than a challenge to four EU founding states…. It is a challenge to the Europe of the future. For Blair has also announced that he will reopen, as of October, the draft of the European constitution woven together in laborious detailed work, with the goal of removing from the text the passage about “increased cooperation” in defense policy. This announcement puts Germany in a very difficult position. Berlin has just begun to rebuild bridges across the Atlantic by announcing an increased engagement in Afghanistan, and it might possibly even show the flag in Iraq sometime in the future. If it now rejoins the front of the fighters for Europe’s unilateralism in defense policy, all efforts for easing transatlantic tensions may well have been in vain. Europe can expect a hot autumn.”

IRAQ

• The Pentagon said Monday it plans to send as many as 28,000 Iraqis on intensive police training courses at a makeshift academy in eastern Europe. The officer training courses are to be run from the Taszar air base in Hungary, and the first bath of 1,500 recruits is due to arrive within the next few months, writes The Guardian. “The Americans approached the government and asked if it would be possible to use the base for Iraqi police training. They said a formal request would be made if the (Hungarian) response was positive The Hungarian government said ‘yes’ to the unofficial request,” the newspaper quotes a senior official saying in Budapest. Hungarian officials were reportedly doubtful that the base would be able to process 28,000 cadets, or that Budapest’s involvement in such a controversial issue would be politically prudent. In Budapest, adds the newspaper, officials said the American police training could be split among several countries, most probably the new NATO members of central Europe.

In a contribution to the International Herald Tribune, Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the UN and the architect of the Dayton accords, insists that the UN must be protected in Iraq and the country’s general situation improved.
Holbrooke writes: “The Security Council should pass a resolution authorizing a multinational force … with the specific and narrowly focused assignment of protecting UN personnel and installations. The best country to lead such a force might be Norway—a respected NATO ally of the United States, with long-standing ties to the U.S. military and a defense minister who is a favorite of the Pentagon…. A Norwegian battalion could form the core of a UN self-protection force, accompanied by Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani troops. After the attack (on UN headquarters) in Baghdad, Secretary of State Powell said at the UN that the United States would oppose any dilution of the hallowed principle of ‘unity of command,’ which is a critical point for the U.S. military. But unity of command has historically been defined in many different ways. In Afghanistan there are currently two commands—the American command of Operation Enduring Freedom, outside Kabul, and ISAF, inside Kabul. ISAF recently became a NATO responsibility, but that is not how it was originally structured. There is also a large international force going into Iraq under Polish command, with more than 20 nations participating. So there are varied ways to structure unity of command…. The details could be worked out in many different ways. The important thing is this: the United States is going to need to reach an agreement with other nations of the Security Council. Otherwise, the situation for UN operations in Iraq will be untenable—and the United States, above all, needs a UN presence in Iraq.”

BALKANS

• Reuters reports NATO-led peacekeepers took up positions Tuesday around buildings belonging to the family of former Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic. According to the dispatch, an SFOR spokesman confirmed that an operation was underway but gave no details.

OTHER NEWS

• AP quotes a French military spokesman saying in Abidjan Tuesday that rebels shot and killed two French troops in Ivory Coast, marking France’s first combat deaths in peacekeeping efforts in its former colony after a 9-month civil war. According to the dispatch, the spokesman said a third French soldier was wounded in the exchange of gunfire late Monday. Monday’s clash occurred in a buffer zone in the center of the country, where peace troops are deployed between rebel forces to the north and government forces to the south. French forces were in a boat, on newly launched patrols to secure Lake Kossou, south of the rebel stronghold of Bouake, the spokesman reportedly said. He called the attackers “uncontrolled elements” on the rebel side and stressed that the clash “does nothing to change the mission of the French army in Ivory Coast.”