NATO EmblemIn February NATO's secretary-general blasted Europe's reluctance to respond to American calls for more troops in Afghanistan, saying countries like Germany and France need to "share the heavy lifting."
Germany's chancellor endorsed the principle of greater military support for the U.S. in NATO operations but did not commit to additional deployment in Afghanistan. France's president did not mention the issue at all during at a meeting of world leaders at the Munich Security Conference
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, a staunch supporter of U.S. calls for more European troops in Afghanistan, referred to a joint call this week from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy to strengthen Europe's role in NATO. He said it was a good idea but would not come without cost.
"I'm frankly concerned when I hear the United States is planning a major commitment for Afghanistan but other allies are already ruling out doing more," he told a gathering of world leaders and top ministers at the Munich Security Conference. "That is not good for the political balance ... and it also makes the calls for Europe's' voice to be heard in Washington perhaps a bit more hollow than they should be."
Germany has argued that its military is already too far stretched to commit more troops beyond the 4,500 now in the relatively calm north of Afghanistan. Instead, it has said the focus should be on future civil reconstruction, in conjunction with military security.
The French parliament voted in September to keep 3,300 French troops in the Afghan theater, but has no current plans to increase the French contingent.
Sarkozy argued for a Europe more ready to defend itself instead of relying on others, without touching on the Afghan troops issue. "Does Europe want peace, or does Europe want to be left in peace?" he asked. "If you want peace, then you need to have the requisite means to survive ... you need to have political and military power."
While supporting the general concept of more European military backing of the U.S. through NATO, Merkel also did not address U.S. calls for additional European deployments.
"We think that international conflicts can no longer be shouldered by one country alone," she declared. "No country can go it alone, so the cooperative approach needs to be guiding us."
De Hoop Scheffer said that if Europe wants a greater voice, it needs to do more.
"The Obama administration has already done a lot of what Europeans have asked for including announcing the closure of Guantanamo and a serious focus on climate change," he said. "Europe should also listen; when the United States asks for a serious partner, it does not just want advice, it wants and deserves someone to share the heavy lifting."
De Hoop Scheffer added that the same principle applies to Russian requests to be involved in Washington's plans to place a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
He said Russia cannot talk of a new "security architecture" yet build its own new bases in Georgia and cause Kyrgyzstan to close the Manas air base, used by the U.S. to resupply troops in Afghanistan.
Kyrgyzstan's president announced the closure of the base on a visit to Moscow on Tuesday, just hours after securing more than $2 billion in loans and aid from Russia. U.S. officials said it acted as a result of pressure from Moscow, but Russia and Kyrgyzstan denied that.
The U.S. plans interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic. Washington has said the system is aimed at preventing missile attacks by "rogue states" such as Iran, but Russian officials claim the true intention is to undermine Russia's defenses.
On Iran, which is already under U.N. Security Council sanctions, Merkel said the West was ready to push for harsher penalties to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear arms.
"It is a must to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons," she said, alluding to international concerns that Tehran's civilian program could be used to declare such arms. The Islamic Republic asserts its intentions are purely peaceful.
"In 1877, Lord Salisbury, commenting on Great Britain's policy on the Eastern Question, noted that 'the commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies.” Salisbury was bemoaning the fact that many influential members of the British ruling class could not recognize that history had moved on; they continued to cling to policies and institutions that were relics of another era."
Germany's chancellor endorsed the principle of greater military support for the U.S. in NATO operations but did not commit to additional deployment in Afghanistan. France's president did not mention the issue at all during at a meeting of world leaders at the Munich Security Conference
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, a staunch supporter of U.S. calls for more European troops in Afghanistan, referred to a joint call this week from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy to strengthen Europe's role in NATO. He said it was a good idea but would not come without cost.
"I'm frankly concerned when I hear the United States is planning a major commitment for Afghanistan but other allies are already ruling out doing more," he told a gathering of world leaders and top ministers at the Munich Security Conference. "That is not good for the political balance ... and it also makes the calls for Europe's' voice to be heard in Washington perhaps a bit more hollow than they should be."
Germany has argued that its military is already too far stretched to commit more troops beyond the 4,500 now in the relatively calm north of Afghanistan. Instead, it has said the focus should be on future civil reconstruction, in conjunction with military security.
The French parliament voted in September to keep 3,300 French troops in the Afghan theater, but has no current plans to increase the French contingent.
Sarkozy argued for a Europe more ready to defend itself instead of relying on others, without touching on the Afghan troops issue. "Does Europe want peace, or does Europe want to be left in peace?" he asked. "If you want peace, then you need to have the requisite means to survive ... you need to have political and military power."
While supporting the general concept of more European military backing of the U.S. through NATO, Merkel also did not address U.S. calls for additional European deployments.
"We think that international conflicts can no longer be shouldered by one country alone," she declared. "No country can go it alone, so the cooperative approach needs to be guiding us."
De Hoop Scheffer said that if Europe wants a greater voice, it needs to do more.
"The Obama administration has already done a lot of what Europeans have asked for including announcing the closure of Guantanamo and a serious focus on climate change," he said. "Europe should also listen; when the United States asks for a serious partner, it does not just want advice, it wants and deserves someone to share the heavy lifting."
De Hoop Scheffer added that the same principle applies to Russian requests to be involved in Washington's plans to place a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
He said Russia cannot talk of a new "security architecture" yet build its own new bases in Georgia and cause Kyrgyzstan to close the Manas air base, used by the U.S. to resupply troops in Afghanistan.
Kyrgyzstan's president announced the closure of the base on a visit to Moscow on Tuesday, just hours after securing more than $2 billion in loans and aid from Russia. U.S. officials said it acted as a result of pressure from Moscow, but Russia and Kyrgyzstan denied that.
The U.S. plans interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic. Washington has said the system is aimed at preventing missile attacks by "rogue states" such as Iran, but Russian officials claim the true intention is to undermine Russia's defenses.
On Iran, which is already under U.N. Security Council sanctions, Merkel said the West was ready to push for harsher penalties to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear arms.
"It is a must to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons," she said, alluding to international concerns that Tehran's civilian program could be used to declare such arms. The Islamic Republic asserts its intentions are purely peaceful.
"In 1877, Lord Salisbury, commenting on Great Britain's policy on the Eastern Question, noted that 'the commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies.” Salisbury was bemoaning the fact that many influential members of the British ruling class could not recognize that history had moved on; they continued to cling to policies and institutions that were relics of another era."
Stephen Meyer, wrote an essay in 2003, entitled "Carcass of Dead Policies: The Irrelevance of NATO." NATO has been irrelevant for two decades, since its raison d'etre -- to keep the Red Army from driving to the Rhine -- disappeared. Yet Obama went to Brussels to celebrate France's return and the 60th birthday of the alliance. But why is NATO still soldiering on? In 1989, the Wall fell. Germany was reunited. The Captive Nations cast off communism. The Red Army went home. The USSR broke apart into 15 nations. But, having triumphed in the Cold War, it seems the United States could not bear giving up its role as Defender of the West, could not accept that the curtain had fallen and the play was closing after a 40-year run. So, what did we do? In a spirit of "triumphalism," NATO "nearly doubled its size and rolled itself right up to Russia's door.
Breaking our word to Mikhail Gorbachev, we invited into NATO six former member states of the Warsaw Pact and three former republics of the Soviet Union. George W. Bush was disconsolate he could not bring in Georgia and Ukraine. Why did we expand NATO to within a few miles of St. Petersburg when NATO is not a social club but a military alliance? At its heart is Article V, a declaration that an armed attack on any one member is an attack on all. America is now honor-bound to go to war against a nuclear-armed Russia for Estonia, which was part of the Russian Empire under the czars.After the Russia-Georgia clash last August, Bush declared, "It's important for the people of Lithuania to know that when the United States makes a commitment -- we mean it." But "mean" what? That a Russian move on Vilnius will be met by U.S. strikes on Mother Russia? Are we insane? Does anyone believe that, to keep Moscow from re-establishing its hegemony over a tiny Baltic republic, we would sink Russian ships, blockade Russian ports, bomb Russian airfields, attack Russian troop concentrations? That would risk having some Russian general respond with atomic weapons on U.S. air, sea and ground forces. Great powers do not go to war against other great powers unless vital interests are imperiled. Throughout the Cold War, that was true of both America and Russia. Though he had an atomic monopoly, Harry Truman did not use force to break the Berlin blockade. Nor did Ike intervene to save the Hungarians, whose 1956 revolution Moscow drowned in blood. John F. Kennedy did not use force to stop the building of the Berlin Wall. Lyndon Johnson fired not a shot to halt the crushing of Prague Spring by Soviet tanks. When Solidarity was snuffed out on Moscow's orders in 1981, Ronald Reagan would not even put the Polish regime in default. In August 1991, George Bush I, in Kiev, poured ice water on Ukraine's dream of independence: "Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred." Many Americans were outraged. But outrage does not translate into an endorsement of Bush's 43's plan to bring Ukraine into NATO and risk war with Russia over the Crimea. Bush 43 bellowed at Moscow last summer to keep hands off the Baltic States. But his father barely protested when Gorbachev sent Special Forces into all three in 1991. Bush I's secretary of state, Jim Baker, said it was U.S. policy not to see Yugoslavia break up. Bush 43 was handing out NATO war guarantees to the breakaway republics. Washington succumbed to victory disease and kept kicking Russia while it was down two decades of humiliation were a potent incentive for Russia to push back. Indeed this is why many realists opposed NATO expansion in the first place." Few Americans under 30 recall the Cold War. Yet can anyone name a single tripwire for war put down in the time of Dean Acheson or John Foster Dulles that we have pulled up? Dwight Eisenhower in his first meeting with the new president-elect, told JFK, "'America is carrying far more than her share of the free world defense.' It was time for the other nations of NATO to take on more of the cost of their own defense." Half a century later, we are still stuck "to the carcass of dead policies."
Should Americans defend pacifist Europeans who do not want to be defended? Should America continue to help Europeans who will not help us in Afghanistan?
No comments:
Post a Comment