Tag Archives: NATO

NATO faces economic challenges

By YEWON KANG

Leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreed to continue the fight against terrorism and new threats during their Lisbon summit on November 19 and 20. However, the alliance leaders also agreed they must face another the challenge together — the need to share the burden the economic crisis is placing on their ability to provide for their common defense.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen released a new Strategic Concept, an 11-page document that lays out NATO’s strategy for the next 10 years.

“All allies have to cope with the serious effects of the economic crisis,” said Fogh Rasmussen, in NATO Review, the organization’s monthly publication. “That is a simple reality, and cuts are inevitable. However, we need to be aware of the potential long-term negative effects if we implement defense cuts that are too large and disproportionate.”

Over the last decade, NATO members have cut down on their defense budgets without any expectation of growth, said Sally McNamara, in a phone interview.  McNamara is a senior policy analyst of European affairs at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington.

In 1999, at a NATO meeting in Washington, the 28-member alliance agreed to spend two percent of each nations’ gross domestic product on defense. But only five partner countries currently meet the two percent benchmark — Albania, France, Greece, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Even with the financial constraints of the economic crisis, McNamara suggested there is “room for improvement.”  She said the NATO partners can strengthen security without necessarily raising their defense budgets.

One of these cost-free improvements would be to get rid of national caveats, which are the restrictions that NATO countries place on the use of their troops and equipment in Afghanistan.

“It’s not just about money, it’s sharing a burden of casualty,” McNamara said, referring to the disproportionately high number of casualties being suffered by the NATO countries that allow their troops to operate without caveats.

Another suggestion is the multinational procurement project. This is a sharing system for advanced technology weapons and equipment designed to save money.

The leaders also agreed to reform the NATO command structure, reducing staff size at several alliance headquarters and agencies in an effort to make the organization more cost effective.

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Why the U.S. outspends the world on defense

By CATHERINE NGAI
WASHINGTON – Evan Siff comes from a military family. His great grandfather was a general, his grandfather was in the navy and so was his father. For Siff, staying close to that tradition was second nature.

But, he chose the academic route and pursued an MA in International Relations at Durham University in England. In his dissertation, he examined NATO as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, and how that relates to US military spending.

If you ask him what he learned as a result of the degree, his answer will be unorthodox.

“When I was writing my thesis, I really examined why NATO didn’t go away. The fall of the USSR made it obsolete,” Siff said. “I found out some things that didn’t help my outlook on things at all…I had gotten pretty cynical. The more you study, you more you will realize how much lobbyists actually determine legislation in the U.S.”

And while most of his fellow-classmates moved into government jobs, Siff chose to work in public relations at Topaz Partners, a Boston-area technology PR firm, because he was disappointed in how “political” the military had become, especially when the U.S. is pouring millions and billions of dollars into two wars that seem too expensive. (Continued below graphic)

In U.S. Dollars. Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Graphic by Catherine Ngai

The current U.S. defense budget proposal of $708 billion for fiscal 2011, a 6.7 percent increase from the year prior of $663.8 billion. According to the Stockholm International Peace and Research Institute, this number surpasses defense spending in the next 10 countries combined. Some question why this number is so big and whether reducing it would help lower the nation’s budget deficit.

“The US military is the pillar upon which the stability and safety of the international system rests,” said Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Arlington, VA, in an interview. “It’s not in our interests to see the Middle East exploding into war or to see South Korea overrun by North Korea.”

Goure says that although the U.S. military budget is large, it acts as an international defense mechanism. He argues that the U.S. uses its military to keep peace internationally.

He also points out that if the entire defense budget were cut to zero, it would further exacerbate the debt situation instead of alleviating it. He reasons that eliminating the defense budget would mean firing the nearly 1.4 million men and women on active duty and the another 1 million in the Reserves and the National Guard. This would mean increasing the already high unemployment rate.

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A whole different kind of AWOL

The 17 Afghan men ­stare ­out from the black and white mug shots of a military-issued memo.

The Be-On-the-Look-Out bulletin, or BOLO­, is the modern-day equivalent of a “WANTED” poster, ­shared between different ­federal agencies to help track down fugitives or missing persons within the United States.

These 17 faces are not those of terrorists, according to the U.S. government. They are missing Afghani military members, and, the moment they walked off base where they were training, they became illegal immigrants. And wanted men.

Since it was first reported ­by FOX ­News a few ­weeks ago, the BOLO, and the news it heralds, has caused a stir among government and military officials, catching the attention of members of Congress.

It was issued by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to alert military professionals that the men had gone missing from the Defense Language Institute’s campus at Lackland Air Force Base.

At the institute outside San Antonio, Texas, the ­Afghan troops were in the middle of, or in some cases had graduated from, an English language-training program that would allow them to go on to other U.S. military educational facilities, anywhere from dental training school to the War College. At the end of their education, they were supposed to return to Afghanistan, where they would help American and NATO forces fight the insurgency and stabilize the country.

“We are continuing to monitor the situation,” said Capt. John Severns, spokesman for Air Education and Training Command, which runs Lackland Air Force Base. He said once they went missing, though, the Afghan soldiers fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security.

Perhaps the bulletin’s most interesting effect has been to illuminate the murky communications between the tangle of military and government agencies that are handling the issue.

“There are a lot of hands in this,” said one defense official with knowledge of the matter, asking not to be named because his agency did not currently have jurisdiction over the Afghan fugitives.  He suggested a number for the NATO agency called the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, which brought the Afghan men to the U.S. The U.S. number for that agency did not work.

He confirmed that the NCIS bulletin was incomplete and outdated in that it only reported 17 Afghan individuals, when there have been 46 who have gone missing between 2007 and 2009. He said of the 17 named, all but four had been found – many are seeking asylum in Canada. He had no knowledge of what prompted NCIS to issue the bulletin at the time it did.

He and other military officials said they were not concerned that the absences were a threat to security, though. All access privileges are revoked and ID cards inactivated once a person disappears, he said.

At Lackland, Air Force officials can only try to discourage the students who are still there from deserting.

And keeping them under lock and key is out of the question, Severns said.

“They’re students, not prisoners,” he said.

But Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) has concerns about the security implications of the disappearances. Smith, a ­member of the Homeland Security Committee, has called for the Air Force and Department of Homeland Security to brief Congress on the issue.

“It’s no surprise that individuals who come to the U.S. legally on visas decide to stay illegally. But when those individuals are foreign military officers – with special access to military facilities – it creates a serious national security threat to American communities,” he said in a ­statement.

It is not uncommon for foreign nationals brought to the U.S. by the military for schooling to decide they like it enough to stay against their visas. According to Air Force and Defense officials, it’s been happening for decades, with many just staying under the radar or heading to Canada.

“People jumping ship is pretty common,” said Muzaffar Chista, Director of the Migration Policy Institute at New York University School of Law, speaking generally about the phenomenon in immigration and U.S. history.

He said the Afghan military members were somewhat similar to stowaways, people who stay on board a vessel just long enough to reach a port where they disembark – and then disappear into the crowd.

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Georgian NATO membership in permanent holding pattern?

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili meets with Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala. and Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md. of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe U.S. Helsinki Commission May 14 on Capitol Hill.
Justine Jablonska/MEDILL

WASHINGTON – When Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili attended the Nuclear Summit in Washington DC in April, there’s a few things he didn’t do. He didn’t meet with President Barack Obama or Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Saakashvili also didn’t discuss Georgia’s membership in NATO with members of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, with whom he met on Capitol Hill.

Georgia wants to be in NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – an intergovernmental military alliance whose member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.

NATO has said that it wants Georgia to be in NATO. It’s even released a statement proclaiming that Georgia will be in NATO.

But although both sides agree, that’s not enough – and, according to Aaron Linderman, the Florence and Bookman Peters Excellence Fellow at Texas A&M University, NATO membership may be on indefinite hold for Georgia for numerous reasons.

Linderman says that two very important considerations exist for Georgian membership in NATO.

Will that membership be enough to “deter aggression against Georgia, or will we actually have to fight to protect it?” Linderman asks. He’s not sure, and says that NATO’s commitment to Article 5 regarding the Baltic republics “in the face of open aggression is not 100% certain.”

The mutual defense provision of NATO’s charter has never truly been tested, Linderman says. And the United States would like to keep it that way: “Deterrence is relatively cheap,” Linderman says. “Actually driving the Russians out of Estonia or Poland would be a real mess.”

Mark Chodakiewicz of the Institute of World Politics agrees. “I doubt that we would back Georgia with U.S. troops on the ground if the Russian Federation invaded once again,” he says.

Aggression against Georgia is one consideration, while aggression from Georgia is another: What happens if, once awarded NATO membership, Georgia behaves in a way that “invite[s] intervention from Russia?” asks Linderman.

Some have said that that’s exactly what happened during the 2008 Georgia-Russian conflict, but Linderman says he thinks Saakhashvili’s actions were justified. “He was trying to assert sovereignty over his own territory,” he says, while Russia was waiting for an excuse.

“Intercepted phone messages from the Roki Tunnel suggest that Russian troops were in motion even before the Georgians began their attack on the South Ossetian separatists,” Linderman says.

Those Russian troops that remain in Abkhazia and South Ossetia are a huge obstacle in the way of NATO membership for Georgia, according to Linderman, since some of Georgia’s territory is currently under foreign – read: Russian – occupation. If Georgia is admitted to NATO, then what does NATO do with those Russian forces? Linderman asks.

Thus, as long as those Russian troops remain in Georgia, Linderman says, “it is unlikely that membership will move forward.”

What, then, can move that membership forward?

Russian troops leaving Georgia, says Linderman – but that probably won’t happen.

“Having a few thousand troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia is a relatively cheap way for Russia to prove that it still controls its neighborhood and can block NATO expansion at will,” Linderman says.

Another way would be “some kind of recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” meaning a renunciation of Georgian sovereignty, he says. That move would anger Georgians and affirm Russian aggression in the region – but then Georgia would fully possess the territory it claims, says Linderman, and thus give Georgia a fresh start at a NATO guarantee.

Linderman doesn’t think either of these options will happen anytime soon: “I think we have to conclude that Georgian NATO membership is on ice indefinitely.”

Beyond if Georgia will obtain NATO membership is the question of why it wants it, Linderman says. Is it because Georgia wants assistance, or a guarantee of assistance? Is Georgia “ideologically committed to democracy, civilian control of the military, and independent media and the other things for which NATO members stand?”

According to Chodakiewicz, Georgia is continuing to show “some sophistication in its propaganda, stressing the human right’s side of the issue, which flies very well in the West.”

Linderman says that while Georgia’s record isn’t perfect, it does have a real commitment to democratic values. Commitment alone isn’t enough, however: “Saakashvili and other Georgian leaders have to realize that it is not enough to have a pretty good democracy,” Linderman says. “They need to work tirelessly to ensure the rule of law and democratic governance.”

Although Saakhashvili didn’t meet with Obama or Medvedev during his Washington DC trip, he did meet with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, who thanked Saakhashvili for Georgia’s troop contribution to Afghanistan. Georgia also has troops in Iraq, for a total of 3,000 troops fighting alongside U.S. troops. According to Richard Holbrooke, Special U.S. Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Georgia appears to have the highest per capita troop contribution of any country in the world.

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