Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

11 February 2004

MEDITERRANEAN DIALOGUE

• According to the Wall Street Journal, the United States is putting the final touches on an ambitious proposal for broadening NATO’s role in a broadly defined Middle East. The newspaper claims that the U.S. proposal, informally circulated to NATO officials Tuesday, is part of Washington’s larger effort to draw its European allies into helping reshape the region. NATO will reportedly form just one cog of the broader regional initiative, which will be discussed in summits with the EU and the Group of Eight industrialized nations in June. The article adds that although the exact workings of the initiative remain sketchy, U.S. officials hope the Alliance can foster cooperation in areas including counter-terrorism, joint military operations, training of local officers, peacekeeping and preventing proliferation of dangerous weapons. According to the newspaper, Washington plans, for instance, to have local armed forces take part in NATO missions such as Active Endeavor in the Strait of Gibraltar. Under the plan, Middle Eastern military officials might also be able to attend NATO’s training colleges, bringing western military standards to their armed forces. The initiative would focus on a region being called the greater Middle East, loosely defined to include countries in North Africa, the Arab world and Central Asia. The U.S. reportedly plans to present the proposal for NATO approval in the next few weeks and to discuss details at the NATO summit in Istanbul in June. The article asserts that the kernel of the U.S. vision for NATO is an enhanced “Mediterranean Dialogue.” Noting that the backers of this effort point to NATO’s success in helping affect political and military change in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the article comments, however: “It remains to be seen whether NATO can successfully transplant its Eastern European experience to bring about similar changes in the greater Middle East. For one thing, the Alliance will lack a major incentive used to stimulate reforms in Eastern Europe—the prospect of eventual NATO membership. NATO has no plans to offer that reward in the Middle East.”
  
  
• According to AP, Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres said in Jerusalem Wednesday Europe should provide incentives for the Palestinians and Israelis to make peace, including offering them membership in the European Union. Speaking to the Foreign Press Association, Peres reportedly said the United States could encourage the two sides to make peace. After a peace agreement is reached, he said, Israel and a Palestinian state could become members of the EU and take part in the NATO PFP program. He also said Jordan should be offered EU membership and that the new Jordanian-Palestinian-Israeli bloc could become “a modern Benelux.” He said Europe and the United States should seek to guarantee the borders agreed on between Israel and the Palestinians. He also suggested a charter to fight terrorism. According to the dispatch, he said he had already talked to European leaders about the proposal, and there was some support.

Under the title, “Strategic Geography,” Die Welt, Feb. 10, wote that “NATO, which found its organizational principle in the Soviet threat and was able to bring the Cold War to a peaceful end, will find its decisive mission in the Greater Middle East, as the region from Casablanca to Kashmir has been called since the end of the Soviet empire.” The newspaper continued: “The European security doctrine, elaborated last year by Javier Solana … follows the American doctrine in the threat analysis: weapons of mass destruction, apocalyptic terrorism, chaotic states. The lines cross in the southern arc of crisis between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean…. NATO will enter a new strategic geography or it will simply cease to be. However, the days of the EU would also be numbered. The Atlantic Alliance is no longer meeting its fate in the Fulda Gap but in the southern arc of crisis.”
Analyzing the implications of the “Greater Middle East” concept, France’s Le Figaro, Feb. 10, wrote: “From a European viewpoint, if the notion of a ‘Greater Middle East’ is to have a meaning and a future, it must at least serve to legitimize the multilateral frameworks for pacifying the region: The Barcelona process, namely the goal of bringing development and democracy to the region, and the idea for an international conference on the Middle East and an international conference on Iraq, involving all the neighboring countries, with the goal of security. It is within these multilateral security frameworks that NATO and/or EU involvement could have a meaning, as guarantors of possible mutually agreed accords.”

ESDP

Media center on reports that France, Britain and Germany presented joint proposals Tuesday for the EU to create military battle groups for short-notice deployments to crisis spots around the world.
Britain, France and Germany have laid out plans for a string of EU rapid reaction units equipped for combat in some of the world’s most difficult terrain, accelerating the drive for European defense cooperation, writes The Independent. The initiative underlines the importance attached by the EU’s biggest defense powers to boosting joint military capabilities as a means of increasing Europe’s foreign policy clout, the daily comments.
According to diplomats, writes Paris’ Le Figaro, the plan calls for forming several inter-service tactical groups of 1,500 troops each. They would be able to be deployed to a theater of operations within 15 days and stay there for 30 days. In principle the idea is to act in support of the UN and under a UN mandate, but that would not be mandatory. “Sources emphasize, however, that there would be no duplication of the resources of NATO, which is in the process of setting up its own Rapid Response Force,” adds the newspaper.
The Financial Times stresses that the decision, made a week before a summit of British, French and German leaders in Berlin, signals the ever-growing cooperation between Europe’s big three countries on a wide range of issues.

BALKANS

• BBC News quoted ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte saying in Brussels Wednesday that indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic is living in Belgrade. According to the broadcast, del Ponte said she had received information “just last week” from a credible source in the Serb capital. She added that her office’s relations with Serbia were frozen as a result.