Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

30 March 2004

NATO

• Moscow’s Interfax reports the Russian Foreign Ministry announced Monday that Foreign Minister Lavrov would attend an informal meeting of the Russia-NATO Council’s foreign ministers in Brussels on April 2. The source reportedly noted that the meeting would be the first event to involve representatives from NATO’s 26 member nations instead of the previous 19. According to the dispatch, the source said Russia’s attitude to NATO’s enlargement remains “calmly negative.”

A ceremony in Washington Monday at which President Bush welcomed seven new nations into NATO tops the news. Focus is on Moscow’s reaction to reports that NATO sent fighter jets to the Baltic states to guard the airspace.
Moscow Monday bristled at the accession of the Baltics even as NATO Secretary General de Hoop Scheffer said friction with Russia would be minimized despite the start of patrols by Alliance aircraft out of Lithuania, writes AFP. The dispatch observes, however, that despite Moscow’s grumbling, the admission of seven new members has been met with little of the passionate debate that accompanied the last round of NATO enlargement in 1999. It suggests that softening Russia’s antagonism have been assurances from NATO that it is merely replacing Cold War defenses aimed at Moscow with light, rapidly deployable forces designed to respond to crises outside Europe, notably in the Middle East and Central Asia. BBC News carried its central Europe correspondent saying, in a similar vein, that despite its resistance to the inclusion of the Baltic states, Russia had done little more than grumble and its complaining had not caused significant debate. The network’s defense correspondent observed that Alliance membership is a rite of passage, providing the new member countries with a confirmation of their own transformation into democratic, market oriented states. NATO itself is changing, taking on new missions in Afghanistan and possibly Iraq and is looking toward its southern flank with North Africa amidst growing concerns about terrorism, he stressed. The correspondent further noted that Washington is already eyeing the territory of some of the new members as potential locations for military bases from which to project U.S. power into the greater Middle East.

The Washington Post comments that the entry of seven former Communist countries into NATO Monday pressed the Alliance’s boundaries farther into what once was Warsaw Pact territory and emphasized its post-Cold War rebirth as a partnership aimed increasingly at fighting terrorism in Europe and beyond. The article also notes that the expansion tips the balance of NATO further eastward—and tends to make the group as a whole more sympathetic to U.S. foreign policy.

AFGHANISTAN

• AP reports hundreds of Afghan militia forces raided heroin laboratories in an eastern province on Tuesday, arresting more than 30 people and seizing large quantities of drugs and chemicals. The dispatch quotes a police source saying Afghan forces mobilized early in the day and raided dozens of drug laboratories near the border with Pakistan. The operation was on-going, the source reportedly added.

Reports that Britain might send more troops to Afghanistan to bolster NATO-led operations in the country are generating interest.
The government is to announce that 100 more British soldiers are to be sent to Afghanistan as part of an ambitious NATO plan to try to pacify the entire country and clamp down on warlords, writes The Guardian. The article asserts that the NATO plan, expected to be agreed in Brussels next week, will require thousands of extra troops from forces round the world. “The plan is to consolidate the north, then the west, south and east,” stresses the daily.

Britain’s overstretched armed forces are being called on to send more troops to Afghanistan to reinforce NATO-led operations this summer, reports The Times. According to British officials, adds the newspaper, the Ministry of Defense will this week announce the deployment of a second permanent military force to northern Afghanistan to support the British operation in Mazar-I-Sharif. Britain may also be called on to contribute further troops to help bolster NATO forces, under plans being finalized in Brussels. The article continues: “NATO is planning to expand its peacekeeping operations beyond Kabul and Kunduz to cover the whole country. A sizeable force will be necessary to bolster security, particularly with the onset of the spring fighting season and forthcoming general elections. There are about 500 British troops currently serving in ISAF. NATO sources said a few more hundred could be needed to open a new … PRT in northern Afghanistan. There is also a desperate need for officers and other staff to run the ISAF headquarters in Kabul.” The article quotes unnamed NATO sources saying it was widely acknowledged that Britain was over-extended abroad, but that it was one of the few countries in the Alliance with forces ready for operational use.
AFP observes meanwhile that NATO took charge of ISAF last August and pledged two months later to extend it beyond Kabul—but it is still battling to drum up the extra forces necessary. “The mission comes at a tough juncture with resources already stretched thin notably in Iraq. And military officials openly admit they have had to battle hard to persuade member countries to provide more,” stresses the dispatch.

BALKANS

• According to Moscow’s Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostey, a Foreign Ministry spokesman told a news conference in Moscow Tuesday Russia believes a new approach must be found for the Kosovo issue. “We need to find new approaches for resolving this problem, including disarming the extremists,” he reportedly said, adding that Russia intends to raise the issue at Friday’s NATO-Russia Council meeting.

TERRORISM

• A commentary in Welt am Sonntag, March 28, called for a tripartite transatlantic strategy to fight international terrorism. Stressing that terrorism is aimed against the West in general, its values and way of life, the newspaper said: “A war of a new kind is occurring--terrorist in its means, asymmetric by nature, religious in its motives, political in its objectives, global in scope, and local in the attack. The condition for the ability to act is reconstruction of the Euro-Atlantic partnership with no dictates from Washington and no betrayal from Europe. European security without technical and strategic support from America has neither deterrent force nor escalation dominance. It is hardly sufficient for the Balkans and does not extend to Afghanistan, certainly not against terrorism. It does not create confidence and, as Madrid shows, it does not hold up in an emergency. The West needs a triangular strategy: the one side encompasses deterrence and defense, the second dialogue and cooperation with the moderate Arabs, and the third integration with a firm hand. If that works together, the West can win. If not, it will not.”