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22 November 2010 By Rick Rozoff As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization unveils
its first 21st century strategic doctrine in Lisbon
this week, its first ground war and war outside Europe
is in its tenth year with no end in sight. The invasion of and subsequent nine years of combat
operations in Afghanistan are logical – inevitable –
results of the military alliance's last Strategic
Concept adopted at its fiftieth anniversary summit in
Washington, D.C. in 1999. At the time NATO was waging
its first full-scale war, the 78-day Operation Allied
Force bombing assault against Yugoslavia, and had
absorbed the first of what are now twelve members in
Eastern Europe: The Czech Republic, Hungary and
Poland. Launching an unprovoked war of aggression and
operating outside the territory of NATO member states
– and outside international law without a United
Nations mandate – inaugurated the U.S.-controlled
military alliance as a global warfighting
organization. The war in Afghanistan beginning in the
first year of the new century and millennium
represented the further implementation of the 1999
Strategic Concept, itself the first since 1991, the
year of the demise of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet
Union. As NATO described the last Strategic Concept: "At
the Washington Summit meeting in April 1999, the NATO
Allies approved a strategy to equip the Alliance for
the security challenges and opportunities of the 21st
century and to guide its future political and military
development." [1] There are now 140,000 troops (the bulk of them
American) from 50 nations serving with NATO's
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in
Afghanistan, more than were assigned to the bloc's
previous out-of-area deployments – 60,000 in Bosnia in
1995 and 50,000 in Kosovo in 1999 – combined. The Afghan conflict is also the first battleground
on which NATO has suffered war dead. 825 of the 2,223
foreign troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 (1,174
since last year) are from NATO member states other
than the U.S. and from NATO partnership allies.
Subtracting the dead from non-NATO countries –
Australia (21), Georgia (5), Sweden (5), Finland (1),
Jordan (1), New Zealand (1) and South Korea (1) –
2,188 of the foreign war dead are from NATO nations
and 790 from Alliance states other than the U.S. A recent report estimates the number of Afghans
killed in the war at 100,000. Deaths caused by U.S.
drone attacks and NATO helicopter gunship raids in
Pakistan are also mounting, approaching the 2,000
mark. A veritable chorus of recent comments from
American, NATO and NATO ally officials has confirmed
the war that will be in its eleventh calendar year on
January 1 will continue to 2014, beyond 2014 and even
for decades longer. This week NATO's Senior Civilian Representative in
Afghanistan Mark Sedwill said "that the transition
process may run into 2015 and beyond, and that after
foreign troops step down from combat roles the country
could see ‘eye-watering levels of violence,'" whatever
the last expression was intended to connote. The use of the word transition instead of exit was
a calculated choice. It echoes a comment made by the
chief American civilian operative for the war, Special
Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard
Holbrooke, as reported by Pajhwok Afghan News on
November 11. (Sedwill and Holbrooke divide up on the
"diplomatic" side what General David Petraeus combines
on the military one as chief commander of all 152,000
U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.) On November 10 Holbrooke "asserted the US had ‘no
exit strategy' for Afghanistan, and instead a
‘transition strategy' would be unveiled in the
Portuguese capital" during the NATO summit. "After 2014, the diplomat continued, the
international community was not going to be leaving
Afghanistan." [2] A British newspaper announced on November 15 that
General Sir David Julian Richards, Chief of the
Defence Staff, claimed "this week's Nato summit will
outline plans to keep British troops in Afghanistan
for a generation," and "Nato now needs to plan for a
30 or 40 year role to help the Afghan armed forces
hold their country against the militants." [3] If it proves to be accurate, Richards' projection
could entail the U.S. and NATO spending half a century
in Afghanistan. Notwithstanding which, the day before the NATO
summit began in Portugal the chief of the Alliance,
Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was
interviewed by Britain's Daily Telegraph and again
celebrated the war in Afghanistan as a prototype – a
template according to the newspaper account – for
future global operations envisioned in the new
Strategic Concept. While stating "If conditions are not met fully by
the end of 2014, then we will have to continue the
combat mission," Rasmussen asserted: "Our core function will remain territorial defence
of our populations But we must realise that in the
modern world we have to go beyond our borders to
actually protect and defend our borders." In line with the report serving as the foundation
of the new Strategic Concept – "NATO 2020: Assured
Security: Dynamic Engagement," prepared by a "group of
experts" headed by former U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright – Rasmussen indicated NATO's
priorities not only beyond the bloc's borders but
transcending all borders: "The purpose of the new
strategic concept is to prepare the alliance to
address the new security challenges – missile attacks,
cyber attacks, terrorist attacks." [4] Leading up to the summit, NATO conducted the Cyber
Coalition 2010 exercise from November 16-18. "Military
experts from all NATO countries" were invited to take
part and the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of
Excellence in Tallinn, Estonia (established in 2008)
participated in the cyber warfare exercise. [5] Earlier in the week Senator John Kerry, chairman of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke in
language similar to that of Rasmussen, not echoing
NATO's positions but indicating whence they emanate. His comments included: "Some…declared the alliance dead at the end of the
Cold War, when its job was to block Soviet tanks from
rolling into West Germany. NATO demonstrated its value
in the years that followed – transforming into a
political engine for integrating the former Soviet
states of Eastern Europe into the larger community of
nations." "A key element centers on NATO's commitment to
invest roughly $280 million over 10 years to link its
missile defense capabilities with new missile systems
being developed by the United States. Anders Fogh
Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister who is now
NATO's secretary general, says the determination to
press ahead with the missile shield is likely to calm
skeptical publics that NATO can protect them. It
should also provide a better bulwark against Iran."
[6] U.S. permanent representative (ambassador) to NATO,
Ivo Daalder, who while at the Brookings Institution
wrote articles advocating the creation of a global
NATO [7], said in a recent opinion piece published in
the New York Times and the International Herald
Tribune that, regarding what will prove to be the most
significant issue decided upon at the Lisbon summit in
addition to that regarding the Afghan war – extending
the American interceptor missile system to all of
Europe: "[T]he United States is on track to provide the
lion's share of this capability. Our contribution,
called the Phased Adaptive Approach, will exploit
advances in sensor and interceptor technologies to
swiftly deploy a strong, smart missile defense system.
At the core of the system is the SM-3 missile, a
proven ship-borne system that will also be deployed on
land at sites in Romania (by 2015) and subsequently in
Poland (by 2018)…." [8] Julia Gillard, the new prime minister of Australia
– which has the most and has lost the most troops in
Afghanistan of any non-NATO nation, 1,550 and 21
respectively – addressed the House of Representatives
ahead of flying to the NATO summit in Lisbon, and
defended "Australia's likely involvement in the
country for another decade." "In the future when we look back on the years since
2001 no-one will deny that attention turned heavily to
[the Iraq war]. While it has taken too long, there is
now a strategy to achieve transition [in
Afghanistan]." Transition, not withdrawal. Earlier in the same day she told Radio National: "Our eyes shouldn't be on the calendar, they should
be on the ground and working out whether the time to
transition should be right. "We shouldn't transition out only to have to
transition back in some time later." [9] From Washington to Brussels to Canberra – the
Pentagon, NATO and a rapidly evolving Asian NATO – the
strategy like the terminology is identical:
Interminable military deployments and combat
operations in South and Central Asia as the model for
new wars. With NATO already involved in airlifting Ugandan
troops to Somalia, running naval operations in the
Horn of Africa, arming and training Georgia and
Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus (on November 16 the
NATO Parliamentary Assembly referred to Abkhazia and
South Ossetia as "occupied territories"), and pledging
to "defend" the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania over which it has flown warplanes on
continuous rotations since 2004, there will be no lack
of opportunities to apply and expand the
Afghanistan-Pakistan template. 1) North Atlantic Treaty Organization http://www.nato.int/docu/handbook/2001/hb0203.htm 2) Lalit K. Jha, US has no Afghan exit strategy:
Holbrooke http://www.pajhwok.com/en/2010/../us-has-no-afghan-exit-strategy-holbrooke 3) Tim Shipman, The West will never win war
against Al Qaeda, warns armed forces chief as he
reveals plans to keep troops in Afghanistan for '30 or
40 years' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1329560/General-Sir-David-Richards-The-West-win-war-Al-Qaeda.html 4) Nato must continue operations "beyond our
borders" http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45288.html 7) West Plots To Supplant United Nations With
Global NATO http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../154 8) Ivo Daalder, The Case for a NATO Missile
Defense http://www.nytimes.com/2010/../opinion/16iht-eddaalder.html 9) Gillard defends Afghan war role http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/../3069693.htm?section=world |
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