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24 September 2010 By Rick Rozoff The Pentagon’s number two official, Deputy Defense
Secretary William Lynn, was in Brussels, Belgium on
September 15 to address the North Atlantic Council –
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s top civilian
body – and the private Security & Defence Agenda think
tank. His comments at the second event, hosted by the
only defense-related institution of its type in the
city that hosts NATO’s and the European Union’s
headquarters, dealt extensively with what Lynn
referred to as a “cyber shield” over all of Europe,
which he described as a “critical element” for the
28-nation military bloc to address and endorse at its
summit in Lisbon, Portugal on November 19-20. Lynn added that “The alliance has a crucial role to
play in extending a blanket of security over our
networks,” and placed the issue in stark perspective
by stating “NATO has a nuclear shield, it is building
a stronger and stronger defence shield, it needs a
cyber shield as well,” according to Agence France-Presse.
[1] The Security & Defence Agenda website states that
it “regularly brings together senior representatives
from the EU institutions and NATO, with national
government officials, industry, the international and
specialised media, think-tanks, academia and NGOs.”
[2] It is, in short, one of dozens if not scores of
trans-Atlantic elite planning bodies, quasi- and
supra-governmental alike, on both sides of the ocean,
ones which demand to be addressed by leaders of what
style themselves model open and transparent societies.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent appearance
at the Council on Foreign Relations is another
instance of the practice and the principle. [3] In fact, Deputy Defense Secretary Lynn has an
article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, the
journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, entitled
“Defending a New Domain: The Pentagon’s Cyber
Strategy.” Pentagon, State Department and White House
officials – and their European counterparts – enter
and leave government service but maintain lifetime
memberships in organizations like the Security &
Defence Agenda and the Council on Foreign Relations. The Brussels-based think tank lists among its
partners, in addition to NATO and the Mission of the
United States of America to NATO, American arms
manufacturers Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and
United Technologies as well as their European
equivalents. William Lynn came to his current Pentagon position
from that of senior vice president of Government
Operations and Strategy for the Raytheon Company. Corporate leadership posts with weapons firms,
membership in private trans-Atlantic planning bodies
and top positions in national governments are all but
interchangeable roles, held either successively or
simultaneously. Lynn’s comments before the Security & Defence
Agenda gathering also included the demand that NATO
apply the concept of “collective defense” – which is
to say its Article 5 military intervention provision –
to the realm of information technology and computer
networks, as seen above at the same level of
seriousness and urgency as maintaining a nuclear
arsenal and constructing a global interceptor missile
network. In his words, “The Cold War concepts of
shared warning apply in the 21st century to cyber
security. Just as our air defences, our missile
defences have been linked so too do our cyber defences
need to be linked as well.” [4] As with stationing nuclear warheads in Europe, as
far east and south as Turkey, and the “phased adaptive
approach” multilayered missile shield in Eastern
Europe from the Baltic to the Black Seas, building a
cyber warfare system – for that in truth is what is
being discussed – in all of Europe as part of an even
broader – global – project depends upon the compliance
and complicity of NATO’s 26 members and 13 Partnership
for Peace adjuncts in Europe. U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Belgium (20
bombs), Germany (20), Italy (50), the Netherlands (20)
and Turkey (90) – the numbers are estimates, only the
Pentagon knows the true figures and of course will not
divulge them – were brought into and are kept in
Europe under NATO arrangements. The affected countries
have never conducted referendums to determine whether
their citizens support the basing of American nuclear
arms on their soil notwithstanding NATO’s claim to be
a “military alliance of democratic states in Europe
and North America.” No European population is
clamoring to be saved – from whom? from what? – by the
Pentagon’s nuclear gravity bombs. Or its interceptor
missiles. Or its cyber warfare operations. No more than the citizens of 35 European nations
that have supplied troops for NATO’s war in
Afghanistan were consulted on whether sending their
sons and daughters to Asia to kill and die guarantees
the security of their homelands. “Speaking at his residence in a luxurious suburb of
south Brussels, a day after returning from a meeting
with President Barack Obama in Washington” earlier
this month, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh
Rasmussen told a major British newspaper that “If Iran
eventually acquires a nuclear capability that will be
very dangerous, and a direct threat to the allies.
That is the reason why I am now proposing a new and
effective Nato missile defence system.” If Iran acquires a nuclear capacity….As Washington
uses NATO to stationed 90 nuclear bombs in Turkey, a
state bordering Iran. Weapons that have been stored
there for several decades. The same newspaper quoted Robert Hewson, editor of
Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, offering a rare ray of
truth on the matter: “Missile defence is more about
shovelling money to American contractors than
protecting people in Basingstoke.” [5] After meeting with NATO’s North Atlantic Council in
Brussels on September 15, Lynn said, “I think at
Lisbon we will see [a] high-level leadership
commitment to cyber defence. It’s the foundation for
any alliance effort….I was very impressed with the
unity of purpose and the similar vision that most
nations in the alliance seem to have towards the cyber
threat.” [6] Neither the Pentagon nor NATO will be starting from
scratch. This May 21 Lynn’s superior, Pentagon chief Robert
Gates, announced the launching of U.S. Cyber Command
[7], the world’s first such multi-service military
command. On the same day Lynn “called the
establishment of U.S. Cyber Command…a milestone in the
United States being able to conduct full-spectrum
operations in a new domain,” and contended that the
“cyber domain…is as important as the land, sea, air
and space domains to the U.S. military, and protecting
military networks is crucial to the Defense
Department’s success on the battlefield.” [8] The website of the Security & Defence Agenda
reiterated the last point in reporting on Lynn’s
speech at the Hotel Renaissance in Brussels on
September 15. The address called for “[p]rioritising
cyberspace as an additional domain of warfare (beyond
land, sea and air) in which America must be able to
operate freely and defend its territory.” How
defending mainland America, or even its farflung
Pacific island possessions, is achieved by a cyber
warfare dome over all of Europe is not explained,
anymore than how nuclear bombs in Europe or Patriot
Advanced Capability-3 and Standard Missile-3
anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and Romania protect
New York City or Chicago. The report reminded its
readers that “the Pentagon has built layered and
robust defenses around military networks and
inaugurated the new U.S. Cyber Command to integrate
cyberdefense operations across the military.” [9] The U.S. military has been consistently blunt in
defining the purpose of CYBERCOM as being to “deter
and or defeat enemies” [10] in the words of its
commander, General Keith Alexander. The use of the word defense in regard to U.S. and
NATO cyber warfare operations is the same as it was
when the United States Department of War was renamed
the Department of Defense in 1947. And in reference to
what is called missile defense. A euphemism and a
disguise for aggression. The Defense Department has
waged war against and in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and
Iraq and launched attacks inside Pakistan, Somalia and
Yemen in a little over a decade. NATO has been working on complementary operations
since the beginning of the century, long before the
cyber attacks in Estonia in 2007 which led to
accusations in the West against Russia and calls for
NATO’s Article 5 war clause to be invoked. The Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence
in the Estonian capital of Tallinn was established
five years before, in 2002, and formally accredited as
a NATO Center of Excellence in 2008. In fact NATO’s North Atlantic Council implemented
the bloc’s Cyber Defence Programme in 2002 and “In
parallel, at the Prague Summit the same year, heads of
state and government decided to strengthen NATO’s
capabilities. This paved the way for the creation of
the NATO Computer Incident Response Capability (NCIRC)
in 2002 as a part of the Cyber Defence Programme.” The Cyber Defence Management Authority “is managed
by the Cyber Defence Management Board, which comprises
the leaders of the political, military, operational
and technical staffs in NATO with responsibilities for
cyber defence. It constitutes the main consultation
body for the North Atlantic Council on cyber defence
and provides advice to member states on all main
aspects of cyber defence.” [11] In August of 2008 NATO began extending its cyber
warfare capacities beyond its 28 member states and
created the (North Atlantic) Council Guidelines for
Cooperation on Cyber Defence with Partners and
International Organisations, which was followed in
April of 2009 by the Framework for Cooperation on
Cyber Defence between NATO and Partner Countries. In
the Alliance’s own words, “NATO should be prepared,
without reducing its ability to defend itself, to
extend to Partner countries and international
organizations its experience and, potentially, its
capabilities to defend against cyber attacks.” [12] The Lisbon summit will inaugurate a new NATO
military doctrine for the next ten years. It will
confirm the bloc as a 21st century expeditionary force
without geographical or thematic limits, one which
will seek any opportunity to intrude itself anywhere
in the world under a multitude of subterfuges. [13] The summit will voice unanimous support for a
U.S.-led interceptor missile system to cover all of
Europe. It will maintain the position that American
nuclear weapons must be kept on the continent for
“deterrence” purposes. And it will authorize the
subordination of nations from Britain to Poland and
Bulgaria under a common American-dominated cyber
defense structure for war in the “fifth battlespace,”
for “full-spectrum operations in a new domain.” 1) Agence France-Press, September 15, 2010 http://www.securitydefenceagenda.org/ AboutSDA/tabid/586/Default.aspx 3) Global Grandiosity: America’s 21st Century
World Architecture http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/
2010/../global-grandiosity-americas-
21st-century-international-architecture 4) Agence France-Press, September 15, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../
u-s-cyber-command- waging-war-in-worlds-fifth-battlespace 8) U.S. Department of Defense, May 21, 2010 http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49193.htm 12) Ibid http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../
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