NATO Isn't Dead Yet

By Cernig

Well worth a read, Matt Dupuis at Foreign Policy Watch looks at the evolving nature of NATO and its missions since the end of the first Cold War (Bush and Putin having managed to start a second one) and concludes, despite much mouthbreathing on the subject from various pundits, that NATO "is only dead if we let it become so."

Don't Poke The Bear

By Cernig

SecDef Bob Gates told reporters today that he believes Russia wants to resolve sensitive security disputes with the United States, including proposed missile defenses in central Europe.

``I think that regardless of what's said in public, I think there is still an interest (in Moscow) in pursuing the dialogue, and we are doing that,'' he said.

And you know what? He's right.

Western media outlets have been full of how Russia is "ditching Cold War pacts" like the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) from 1992 and threatening to stop adhering to the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987. Bad Russkis, bad!

But Vlad Putin, whatever one may think of his authoritarian streak, is plain right when he says that ""It is already clear that a new phase in the arms race is unfolding in the world...It is not our fault, because we did not start it." Undermentioned or ignored by Western media are the following:

- it all started because Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty so he could build his missile shield. Of course the Russians are worried about this. For one thing, Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov is correct when he says that this expansion of the US missile defense system from American territory to northeast Asia and to European nations close to Russia's borders looks very like an attempt to encircle Russia and reduce it's own deterrent ability. It doesn't look good that influential neocon think-tanks are pushing for the Bush administration to overturn treaties against weaponry in space either.

- Bush has said he won't renew the INF treaty either, which is partly why the Russians won't. The Russians say they are happy to renew the treaty if the US will re-ratify the ABM treaty and this one.

- NATO nations never ratified the CFE treaty and Russia has only said it will pull out until NATO does ratify it. The eastern bloc nations which include Russia been keeping to it unilaterally since 1999.

Despite it being the Bush administration and NATO nations who began all the recent tension, if Gates pulls of any deal at all he'll get the credit for taming the Bear and have have won the easiest PR victory in history. All because the media didn't remember Putin's admonishment: "Let's not talk as if on one side we are dealing with pure, white and fluffy partners and on the other side with a monster that has just left the forest."

Update Who's the adult in the room here?

Russia and the United States must take leadership in discussions on a new international arms regime, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Sunday.

Speaking at a security conference in Munich, Ivanov referred to the control and reduction of nuclear weapons, adding it was time to replace an existing SALT 1 arms limitation treaty with a new regime:

"As I see it, this is precisely an area of international relations where Russia and the United States not merely could, but are directly obliged to show leadership.

"Sooner or later, we will have to start working in a multilateral format since none of us here, I am sure, has any doubts about the importance of multilateral barriers to WMD (weapons of mass destruction) proliferation," he said.

Grim Reports On Afghanistan

By Cernig

Is there anyone left who doubts that, by taking their eyes of the ball and instead pursuing an aggressive invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has drastically undermined its own "war on terror" where it counts - the central front in Afghanistan. If so, some new reports should be sobering reading for the Bush cheerleading faction.

The three reports have appeared two years after a road map for international assistance was agreed in London.

Oxfam said a "major change of direction... to avert a humanitarian disaster" in Afghanistan was needed.

In an open letter, Oxfam predicts a "humanitarian disaster" in the country, pointing out that millions of dollars of development aid is being wasted.

The charity says that the international approach towards Afghanistan is lacking in direction and is "incoherent and uncoordinated".

"There are very many factors to explain the increasing insurgency, and of course criminality and the role of warlords and drugs traffickers is very important," said Matt Waldman, policy advisor on Afghanistan for Oxfam International.

"But we also have to understand that recruitment is much easier when people are living in desperate circumstances," he said.

Bushie kneejerk response: Oxfam? It's a British-based charity...probably just woolie Brit liberals trying o undermine the war.

OK, how about the Atlantic Council of the United States, headed by General James L. Jones (former Supreme Allied Commander Europe and former Commandant of the Marine Corps) and Frederick Kempe (former WSJ editor) - not to mention being the day-job for conservative blogger James Joyner? No hotbed of librul defeatists there, surely.

The US Atlantic Council began its report with the words: "Nato is not winning in Afghanistan" and talks of a stalemate.

"Without urgent changes Afghanistan could become a failed or failing state," it said.

"If Afghanistan fails, the possible strategic consequences will worsen regional instability, do great harm to the fight against Jihadist and religious extremism, and put in grave jeopardy Nato's future as a credible, cohesive and relevant military alliance."

The American Afghanistan Study Group [sponsored by the Atlantic Council and headed by Gen. Jones - C] reached a similarly grim conclusion in a report released on Wednesday.

It said that "resurgent violence, weakening international resolve, too few military forces and insufficient economic aid" were all contributing to the country's woes.

Canada's conservative government has said it will pull its troops from Afghanistan if help isn't forthcoming. American rightwingers can rail at Europe all they want - but at the end of the day NATO is in Afghanistan because America asked for assistance. All the other NATO nations combined don't spend a fraction of the almost $500 billion the US does on its military annually - even Russia only spends $40 billion a year. If assistance is to come, it should come from the U.S.

But the Bush administration has tapped out reserves of ground troops on the Iraqi misadventure. (Even if you think the Surge was a success - that cannot excuse the profligate waste of the previous four years?) The Bush administration's policy has been a massive and harmful failure, a blight on the national interest, but all the Republican candidates only back more of the same.

MADness Abounds

By Cernig

In a textbook example of why democracies ensure that civilians, not military types, make overarching policy on the use of force, five retired senior generals from NATO nations have argued that NATO must keep its option for the first use of nuclear weapons. To do so they leave out a lot of getting-there-from-here, since the original option was formulated as a response to an overwhelmingly superior Soviet conventional attack on Europe. Now these military thinkers want to be able to exercise that option to prevent a state they don't like from developing its own nukes despite NATO being the one who would have overwhelming conventional superiority over any such state even were the US to drop military spending to match European rates. That's a monumental change and those who argue that strategic ambiguity as practised against the Soviets can thus be extended as if it were "nothing really new" are underselling that fact.

The authors of this remarkable bit of excluded-middle thinking are five retired NATO top military figures - the former chiefs of staff of the US in the Clinton era, the UK, France, Germany and Holland. At least one, Peter Inge of the UK, has made a career since his retirement of doom-and-gloom pronouncements about the perilous state of the British military. This new report is in the same vein in many respects, citing as it does threats to which there may well be not enough military spending to ever solve.

Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.

· The "dark side" of globalisation, meaning international terrorism, organised crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

· Climate change and energy security, entailing a contest for resources and potential "environmental" migration on a mass scale.

· The weakening of the nation state as well as of organisations such as the UN, Nato and the EU.

And yet, when all you know is hammers, every problem is a nail. As Rubber Hose blog points out such a first strike policy fatally undermines non-proliferation theory with an obvious double standard: "when NATO says that it will nuke countries to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons isn't that nuclear blackmail in and of itself?" A doctrine of first strike to support non-proliferation is redolent of "do as we say, not as we do" colonialism and as such entirely non-productive and non-deterrent. Despite having some good ideas about reformation of NATO at a purely decision-making level which would make that organisation more flexible and relevant in a changing world the report is thus fatally flawed by its presumption that military means - NATO and nukes - are necessarily the tools to use to solve the non-proliferation problem.

Knowing clearly that a nuclear first strike is one of the options that has always been on the table, it seems we must also re-evaluate political pronouncements by current and prospective leaders of NATO nations about keeping all options available for use. Worth thinking about in terms of the current US presidential race.

Petraeus For NATO?

By Cernig

There's a New York Times report this morning that Saint-General Petraeus is being considered for the job of Supreme Allied Commander at NATO.

A senior Pentagon official said that it was weighing “a next assignment for Petraeus” and that the NATO post was a possibility. “He deserves one and that has also always been a highly prestigious position,” the official said. “So he is a candidate for that job, but there have been no final decisions and nothing on the timing.”

There follows much hot air from the NYT about Saint Pet being too needed in Iraq to be sent elsewhere, indicative of just how much the Very Serious person set has built Bush's favorite up as God's Own Answer to all that ails that nation. It's bullsh*t of course. The VSP's never mention Petraeus' abyssmal performance as overseer of training and equipping the Iraqi security forces, during which billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of weapons went missing leaving several senior officers indicted for corruption and even one of Petraeus' own aides under investigation.

Still, I'm inclined to agree with James Joyner - who works for the Atlantic Council - that Petraeus to NATO as a pure publicity move would signal that the U.S. wants NATO to repurpose itself away from the fight for the Fulda Gap and put public pressure on the other members to accelerate that process. It would also help to thrust Afghanistan back into the American public consciousness - something that really needs to be done before defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory there. That's a good move in itself, I feel, and stands aside from any actual consideration of whether Petraeus would be any good at the job.

As to the next commander in Iraq, Gate's senior aide Chiarelli would seem to be the obvious choice right now if the Pentagon is serious about it's newfound counterinsurgency paradigm, but I would suggest Colonel H.R. McMaster. He pioneered many of the Surge tactics Saint Pet has gotten credit for at Tal Afar in 2005 and knows more about effective COIN at the sharp end than Petraeus ever will. But because of his view that senior officers have a constitutional duty to speak out when the civilian leadership f**ks up, he's been passed over for promotion to Brig. General twice. He's the best commander MNF-I will never have.

Gates Walks Back NATO Criticism

By Cernig

Turkana at The Left Coaster has a good post today on what has been a problemmatic few days for US relations with NATO allies. It all began when Bob Gates told the LA Times that NATO forces in Afghanistan, where Britain, Canada and the Netherlands have been doing the bulk of the heavy lifting, didn't know "how to do counter-insurgency operations." That led to angry words from NATO members and even NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer diplomatically told reporters that Gates was talking out of his ass.

The British, certainly, would have good cause to be miffed if Gates' criticism was aimed at them. What were the decades-long deployement in Northern Ireland and British operations in Southern Iraq if not extensive real-world counter-insurgency experience? Indeed, the US Surge has more in common with British COIN tactics than it does with the US military's until-then preference for Israeli-style methods.

The Pentagon wasn't quite quick enough to forestall some ill feeling over Gates' words, but is now saying they were taken out of context.

In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said Gates was concerned his remarks were being interpreted as targeting individual countries, stressing that he had said that NATO structures as a whole were not designed to tackle insurgencies.

"The secretary of defense has read the article and is disturbed by what he read," he said. "The totality of the piece leaves the impression that the secretary is disturbed with the performance of individual countries in Afghanistan. He is not."

He said Gates repeated concerns in the January 7 interview over the alliance's capabilities that he had expressed to NATO allies at a meeting in Scotland in December.

And Gates himself told reporters today:

This does not reflect reality or, I believe, the views of our governments," Gates said at a Pentagon news briefing.

"Allied forces from the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia and Denmark and other nations have stepped up to the plate and are paying a significant and powerful role in Afghanistan," he said.

So was it all just a storm in a teacup over words misunderstood? Not exactly. Gates has indeed previously spoken about the need to repurpose NATO away from simply being aimed at preventing a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe - a threat that no arguably longer exists despite Putin's policies creating a resurgent Russian military - towards a more braod-based organisation capable of fighting the War on (Some) Terror. However, he has also been critical of NATO nations who haven't provided more troops for Afghanistan despite the bulk of America's ground forces being bogged down in Iraq. The most recent example being Tuesday on an NPR radio interview.

The first is fair enough - NATO needs to be more flexible, more relevant to the needs of all it's members and all future military threats, not just the needs of the US and its current obssession with Islamist terror. But on the second, Gates would do well to remember that, as Turkana writes:

the facts remain: NATO is there because we were attacked, and they are providing troops because ours are off fighting a war that never should have been started. Our allies are too diplomatic to put it in such stark terms. The Bush Administration is not even diplomatic enough to simply thank them for trying to do the job the Bush Administration failed to do.