Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

13 July 2004

GENERAL JONES

• The BBC World Service, 1600 hrs. GMT, July 12, carried a 6-minute interview with Gen. Jones in its world affairs program Europe Today. Against the background of Iraqi Foreign Minister Zebari’s visit to Brussels for talks on NATO’s offer to help his country train its security forces, Gen. Jones rejected the view that NATO was too divided to have a role and stressed that the Alliance was as useful as ever. He said: “Some months ago, it was decided NATO would focus on Afghanistan in terms of troops on the ground. What happened as a result of the (Istanbul) summit is that NATO has now been asked to do a training mission while expanding the footprint we have in Afghanistan. There’s no question that Iraq on the political scale of things has been under much discussions in capitals, but I would characterize the current level of dialogue following the summit as having progressed beyond the political split … as to what NATO would do or could do. A year and a half ago when I arrived to my duties, I would not have predicted that NATO would be in Afghanistan. Yet eight months later it is there. Probably we would have had the same difficulty just three months ago predicting NATO would be doing anything this year in Iraq and we’re now talking about something that is not insignificant. It’s a huge task and the more international it becomes, I think the better it is for the future stability of the region and a quicker settlement of the overall problems. I think that NATO is an organization which is clearly in transition from its 20th century role of a defensive, reactive, static alliance. This is an alliance that also is still organized to function on total consensus, 100 percent agreement by 26 sovereign nations. It’s an alliance that is conducting a very successful counter-terrorist operation in and on the Mediterranean…. It’s an Alliance that is currently doing quite well in the Balkans. The problem of the (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) has largely been settled. Bosnia—we will be bringing to a military close by the end of this year. Kosovo still remains a problem, we have to be clear about that. And as of August of last year, NATO has embraced a very ambitious mission in Afghanistan and now it is embarking on yet another mission, which could grow in size depending on how it goes with regard to the pretty important function of making sure the Iraqi government succeeds. The NATO Response Force was a dream just a year and a half ago. It’s now a reality and in a culture as wide and varied as NATO is, you have to expect that decision-making progress is not going to gel overnight like in a single nation.” Gen. Jones disagreed with the view that NATO was no longer a grouping which seemed to fit well together. He said: “NATO has to be given its chance to change itself and become more relevant in the 21st century. Change is very hard and this is a massive organization. There are 2.4 million Europeans wearing uniforms. There’s another 2 million Americans and North Americans wearing uniforms in the Alliance. The Alliance is expanding. The eastern bloc countries still see NATO as the best expression of their guarantee for their freedom.” Asked if those nations were perhaps looking to the past and not to their future, he replied: “I don’t think you can look to the future without learning the lessons from the past. If you’ve done any traveling in Eastern Europe, the appetite, pride and sense of identity they have for being part of the Alliance is palpable. So the idea that freedom is essentially here and therefore will always be here is a very dangerous concept. If you’ve seen what’s happening in Madrid, Istanbul, Morocco; if one seriously thinks that these threats are not real and that they are not coming against the soft underbelly of western civilization, then we are not doing our job in communicating to our public because they are real. There’s no other organization like NATO in the world. The whole concept of a transatlantic partnership while it will go through a rough patch every now and then on the political level, I assure you on the military level it is as cohesive and as tight and it’s been as effective--perhaps more effective--than it’s ever been.”

IRAQ

• According to Reuters, Iraqi Foreign Minister Zebari appealed to NATO Tuesday to speed up promised training for his country’s security forces and provide border security support and military equipment as well. “We need this training you promised us in Istanbul to be carried out as soon as possible…. In fact we are in a race against time and it’s a matter of urgency,” Zebari reportedly told a news conference after meeting the NATO ambassadors. The dispatch notes that a NATO delegation visited Iraq last week to establish what Baghdad requires, and the Alliance will decide before the end of this month what its mission will entail. According to the dispatch, the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, said there was a positive response from allies to Zebari’s call for a speedy and collective Alliance mission. A related AP dispatch reports NATO Secretary General de Hoop Scheffer said the Alliance would take a decision this month on launching the training mission. It would also consider Zebari’s other requests, which included military equipment, help guarding Iraq’s borders and protection for a UN mission in the country ahead of elections scheduled for January. According to the dispatch, Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said he plans to present the allies this month with options for a wider Alliance role beyond the military training pledged by NATO leaders at the Istanbul summit. He also said NATO military experts would present allied government with options for the training mission “very soon indeed” following a fact-finding trip to Baghdad last week. Diplomats reportedly expected the military would report within days. Deutsche Welle, June 13, claimed that Germany is pushing for the training to happen at the NATO School in Oberammergau.

BALKANS

• AFP reports EU foreign ministers agreed Monday to deploy a 7,000-strong peacekeeping force to Bosnia, where it will fill in for the outgoing SFOR. The force, which would be the biggest military operation yet undertaken by the EU, would head to Bosnia “before the end of the year,” the officials reportedly said. A related article in the Financial Times notes that many of the soldiers in the new operation will come from the previous NATO force and NATO will be given a key role under asset-sharing arrangements known as “Berlin Plus.” The EU operation headquarters will be at SHAPE. Admiral Feist, DSACEUR, will be made the EU operation commander. Britain’s Maj. Gen. Leakey will be the force commander, the newspaper says, adding: The new EU force will replace NATO in maintaining a safe environment, training Bosnia’s armed forces and supporting the rule of law. But NATO will still have a reduced presence in the country, and both forces will be authorized to pursue suspected terrorists and war criminals.
  
  
• According to AFP, military officials said in Washington Monday the United States is considering keeping a key military air base in Bosnia after NATO wraps up its peace mission there as part of a new force projection concept designed to facilitate the war on terror. Maj. Gen. Darden, a senior representative of the U.S. European Command, reportedly told the House Armed Services Committee the military was examining “the usefulness of maintaining a small U.S. presence at Eagle Base” outside Tuzla after NATO sources pull out. “What we would like to do is have it so that we can surge up to a battalion, if they were required,” he noted. He said the current blueprint called for stationing at the base about 150 U.S. troops equipped with helicopters and thus making it usable as a jumping-off point for larger operations. Eagle Base could be shared by the United States with its EU partners when they take control of the operation, he stressed.