Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

13 April 2004

NATO

• The New York Times reports President Putin said Thursday that he hoped the expansion of NATO might have a positive effect on international relations but that the expansion is not effective against terrorist threats. “Life shows that simply expanding will not enable us to effectively counter the main threats that we are facing today,” he told Mr. de Hoop Scheffer in Moscow. “Russia’s position toward the enlargement of NATO is still well known and had not changed,” he said in a television appearance with Mr. de Hoop Scheffer. Russia said it might increase its military presence bordering three Baltic nations – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – if NATO stations permanent military bases on their soil. Despite Moscow’s opposition to the expansion, Mr. Putin said he hoped it would lead to “the strengthening of trust in Europe and the entire world.” Mr. de Hoop Scheffer told Mr. Putin that Russia should work with the alliance in confronting today’s global threats. “The problems facing us are simply too big – terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq – to think that we can go it alone, that Russia or NATO can go it alone,” he said. During a radio interview, the NATO chief called the deployments normal and nonthreatening. “Russian planes patrol Russian airspace, NATO planes patrol NATO airspace,” he said, “It’s perfectly normal.”
  
  
• According to the Washington Times, April 9, President Putin criticized NATO’s “mechanical expansion” eastward yesterday, but told the alliance’s new chief that international security would be improved by a true partnership with Russia. Moscow also has voiced concern about NATO members’ reluctance to ratify and amended version of the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which limits the number of troops and weapons in various parts of the continent. Mr. de Hoop Scheffer tried to reassure Moscow that all of NATO’s new members “have clearly stated their ambition that as soon as it is possible, they will enter and ratify the treaty.”

EU

• EU’s top military official says EU-led forces could intervene in Sudan, where more than 670,000 people have fled the western region of Dafur following weeks of killings, rape and looting by Arab militias. In an interview with The Financial Times General Hagglund said the possibility of the EU sending a force to Sudan had been raised by Louise Frechette. “There is no reason why the EU could not go to , for instance, Sudan. I see it to be very possible it would be mandated by the UN. It is part of the battlegroup concept,” said Gen. Hagglund.

IRAQ

• The Guardian reports that the Shia uprising is exposing the fragility of the US-led coalition in Iraq and putting a strain on the smaller partners. Many of the other countries joint the coalition in expectation of peacekeeping and reconstruction. No other country other than Spain has decided to pull its forces out of Iraq, but the heavy fighting has caused rethinks in many capitals. The chances of these countries responding positively to call for extra troops are fast diminishing. Leszek Miller, the outgoing prime minister of Poland, which has 2,500 troops, the third highest number after the US and Britain, told the Associated Press: “When people see dramatic scenes in which soldiers are killed, there will be more pressure for a pullout.” He said Poland would stand by its commitments, but sending more soldiers was out of the question.
  
  
• In its April 11 edition The Washington Times reported a battalion of the new Iraqi army refused to go to Fallujah earlier this week to support US Army Marines battling for control of the city, senior US Army officers said, disclosing an incident that is casting new doubt on US plans to transfer security matters to Iraqi forces. It was the first time US commanders had sought to involve the postwar Iraqi army in major combat operations, and the battalion’s refusal came as large parts of Iraqi security forces have stopped carrying out their duties. US Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton said members of the battalion insisted during the ensuing discussions “We did not sign up to fight Iraqis.” He declined to characterized the incident as a mutiny, but rather called it “a command failure.” Eaton said that, in his view, the problem was caused by poor leadership and complicated by the fact that the unit was trained by US advisers who emphasized that their job would be to defend Iraq against outside forces. He also said that the training would be different for future battalions, and handled almost exclusively by Iraqi officers, group of which recently finished re-training in Jordan. “They will train their own men,” he said.
  
  
• According to the Financial Times, The US military has begun recruiting former officers of Saddam Hussein’s military to staff the new Iraqi army, an acknowledgement of the serious problems it has faced in trying to build reliable security forces. In order to try to resolve the problems in Iraqi chains of command, which US generals blamed on Monday for the refusal of several Iraqi units to fight, the coalition is turning to the former soldiers it once spurned. “We’ve got to get more senior Iraqis involved, former military types involved in the security forces,” Gen. Abizaid said. “In the next couple of days, you’ll see a large number of senior officers being appointed to key positions in the ministry of defense and in Iraqi joint staff and in Iraqi field commands. And Gen. Sanchez and I are very much involved in the vetting and placing of these officers and I can tell you the competition for theses positions have been fierce.” On Monday, Gen Abizaid clung to the argument underpinning the Pentagon’s agenda for the US military in Iraq: “The solution to Iraq’s security problems does not lie with the United States armed forces. It’s with the Iraqis themselves. They will become the bulwark against terrorism and anti-democratic forces of this country, because that’s what people want them to be.”