Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

9 December 2003

SACEUR

• De Volkskrant, Dec. 2, carried a question-and-answer interview with Gen. Jones in which he viewed NATO’s transformation. In introductory remarks, the Dutch daily stressed that “according to Gen. Jones, NATO’s fate is linked to rapid reaction forces.” According to Gen. Jones, the newspaper said, there is no need for 2,5 million military personnel. But “the world has become a dangerous place with real threats,” and there is a need for a rapid reaction force. Gen. Jones was quoted saying: “(The NRF) is the future. How we set this up and work it out will determine NATO’s usefulness. I think everybody understands that.”

NATO

• Under the title, “NATO reactivated,” the Dec. 14 edition of Warsaw’s Wprost, writes, based on a visit to ACT: “The theater of operation for the new NATO: the entire world. The armed forces: small but excellently equipped international fast reaction units, capable of taking action within the space of a few days. These are the goals of a NATO overhaul being prepared at Allied Command Transformation (ACT).” The article continues: The revamped NATO is to be a swiftly responding global organization. This is the first clear change. The second change is the abandonment of pipe dreams about collective command and debates between military officers and politicians about against whom a country’s unit may be used. Handing a unit over to common command means consent to its use in any NATO operation. The third change is the adoption of the U.S. command system. “The de-frosting of NATO, if it wins the allies’ political approval, will spell a triumphant return of the United States on the European scene…. The return to the idea of NATO as the basic military force of the contemporary world strengthens the weakened transatlantic ties and U.S. involvement in Europe,” the article comments and concludes: “The reactivation of the Alliance is good news to Poland. The return of the U.S.-led NATO to Europe enhances our security and makes it possible to conduct more active eastern policy, to foster another expansion wave…. It is also an opportunity for the Polish armed forces, because the Polish officers taking part in the work of (ACT) tend to think along more modern lines than their colleagues in domestic staffs.”

UNITED STATES-TROOP BASING

• According to AFP, Defense Minister Szmajdzinski said Monday that Poland will launch a series of consultations with the public on whether U.S. forces can be deployed on its soil. “We are starting today consulting Polish public opinion and leading political circles on this strategic question. We will also consult our allies and neighbors,” he reportedly told a joint conference with U.S. Under Secretary of Defense Feith. The dispatch notes that earlier, Prime Minister Miller said in an interview that Poland was ready to allow US bases on its territory if such a request was made.

Reports that the United States has started consultations with its European allies over shifting troop strengths are generating interest.
The United States began a diplomatic road show Monday to explain the post-Cold War realignment of its military forces, which is widely expected to bring base closures in western Europe, writes the New York Times. The Bush administration has made no decision yet, but Under Secretary of Defense Feith said its new defense policy would reflect NATO’s eastward shift as the Alliance enlarges, the article notes, adding: “U.S. strategic planners have long argued that the 110,000 service personnel stationed in Europe at huge cost should be replaced by smaller units with troops on short rotation tours at bases stretching into eastern European countries. This would give the United States, and by extension NATO, a foothold in the Balkans and strategic reach into Central Asia and the Middle East to take on new security threats such as terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Gen. Jones has been pressing for a three-tiered bases structure. He told Reuters recently that this would entail main operating bases such as Ramstein in Germany, lighter forward operating bases at further-flung locations such as Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo and bare-bones forward operating locations ‘where you .. bring in what you wish to have on your back.’”
A related AFP dispatch quotes U.S. officials saying Monday that the United States could start a realignment of its troops based in Europe next year, although the whole process would take years after that.

BALKANS

• AFP reports Operation Concordia, the European military force in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, will make way for a police mission from December 15, marking a shift from peacekeeping to the fight against organized crime as the number one international priority in the region. The dispatch quotes an EU spokesman saying the new police mission, baptized “Proxima” would help the country “restore the rules of law” in the areas along the borders with Kosovo, Albania and Serbia. By the end of January, Proxima will be at its peak, the spokesman reportedly said, adding that its main aim was the training of local police to meet the challenge of organized crime. The dispatch claims that unlike the European police deployment in Bosnia, officers serving with Proxima will not be armed and will have no executive powers.

COUNTER-TERRORISM

• “Until Monday, 1200 hrs. local time, the NATO ambassadors in Brussels still had time to block the agreement. But nobody put a hand up. Therefore it is clear that the three patrol ships and the support ship of the German Navy, whose task had been to escort ships through the Straits of Gibraltar to protect them from possible terrorist attacks, would probably return to their home port of Warnemuende before Christmas,” reports Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The article notes that the units with approximately 200 troops on board had been stationed in Cadiz, southern Spain, since Oct. 1 and had originally been planned to provide convoy escort in the Strait of Gibraltar until the end of March. Stressing, however, that the operation conducted as part of NATO operation Active Endeavor has not been cancelled, but merely suspended, the newspaper adds: “For the Defense Ministry in Berlin, it is of utmost importance that Germany’s withdrawal of four ships is not seen as a withdrawal from the maritime fight against international terrorism. As part of Active Endeavor, the frigate Niedersachsen continues to conduct patrols in the Eastern Mediterranean.”