30 July 2010 By Rick Rozoff In four months the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization will hold a summit in Lisbon, Portugal.
The host country was one of the 12 nations that
founded the United States-dominated military bloc 61
years ago. The rival grouping that was created six years after
NATO’s formation and its expansion into Turkey and
Greece in 1952 and the Federal Republic of Germany in
1955, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact),
formally dissolved itself almost twenty years ago. In the interim since its formation, having grown to
16 members by 1982 with the incorporation of Spain,
NATO expanded from 12 to 28 members and absorbed 12
nations in Eastern Europe over the past 11 years. The
last dozen were, except for two former Yugoslav
federal republics (Croatia and Slovenia), earlier part
of the Warsaw Pact and in three instances (Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania) also of the Soviet Union. The North Atlantic military bloc’s sole right to
maintain its name is that its major powers do largely
have coastlines on the northern part of the Atlantic
Ocean. The majority of its members do not. Since the
Warsaw Pact’s demise and the breakup of the Soviet
Union in 1991, NATO has subordinated all of Europe
through full membership and the Partnership for Peace
and more advanced programs. The newest members of NATO graduated through
successive stages of integration from the Partnership
for Peace to Individual Partnership Action Plans and
Membership Action Plans to full membership. All
supplied troops for the occupation of Iraq and now
have forces serving under NATO in the Afghan war zone. Current members of the Partnership for Peace
program in Europe are: Austria, Belarus, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Finland, Ireland, Macedonia, Malta,
Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland and
Ukraine. Bosnia, Moldova and Montenegro now have
Individual Partnership Action Plans and Ukraine was
recently granted a special Annual National Program.
Russia was a member of the Partnership for Peace from
1992-1999, but suspended participation in that program
and the Permanent Joint Council with NATO over the
Alliance’s 78-day bombing war against Yugoslavia in
1999. However, in 2002 the NATO-Russia Council was
inaugurated and though in abeyance after the 2008
Georgia-Russia war is functioning again. All three former Soviet South Caucasus states –
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – are Partnership for
Peace members. The first two also have Individual
Partnership Action Plans and Georgia its own Annual
National Program, which NATO awarded it shortly after
its five-day war with Russia in 2008. In Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are in the
Partnership for Peace. Kazakhstan is the first country
outside of Europe (inclusive of the Caucasus) to
receive an Individual Partnership Action Plan. In the Middle East and Northern and Western Africa,
the following countries are NATO Mediterranean
Dialogue partners: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan,
Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. Israel and Egypt each
have an Individual Cooperation Program with NATO
introduced in the last three years under enhanced
Mediterranean Dialogue provisions. Egypt and Jordan
have small troop contingents in Afghanistan. Under the auspices of the Istanbul Cooperation
Initiative of 2004, NATO has strengthened military
ties with the six members of the Gulf Cooperation
Council: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates. All but Oman and Saudi
Arabia have formalized military cooperation
arrangements with NATO. The United Arab Emirates is
one of 46 official Troop Contributing Nations for
NATO’s war in Afghanistan and there are also Bahraini
soldiers in the war theater. The Brussels-based military bloc also has a
category of military cooperation called Contact
Countries, which to date include Australia, Japan, New
Zealand and South Korea. All four have assisted the
war in Afghanistan in various capacities and all but
Japan have provided NATO with troops. Other
Asia-Pacific states have deployed troops to serve
under NATO in Afghanistan and as such are arguably
already Alliance partners. Those countries include
Singapore, Mongolia and Malaysia. NATO has initiated a Tripartite Commission
consisting of its International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF) and the armed forces of Afghanistan and
Pakistan. A complement to the
U.S.-Afghanistan-Pakistan Tripartite Commission, in
2008 former Assistant Secretary of State for South
Asian Affairs Karl Inderfurth referred to it as the
Trilateral Afghanistan-Pakistan-NATO Military
Commission, which is a more accurate, if not its
formal, title. A tally of 28 full NATO members and the partners
mentioned above produces a list of at least 70 of the
192 members of the United Nations which are linked to
the Western military bloc in some manner. Of all those nations, Pakistan is the second
largest, its population of 170,000,000 only surpassed
by that of the U.S. It is also one of only seven
nations that acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons. NATO’s grip on Pakistan was increased in 2005 when
the military bloc became involved in an earthquake
relief operation in the country, NATO’s second mission
in Asia. After that Pakistani military officers attended
training courses at the NATO School in Oberammergau,
Germany for the first time in 2006. The Pakistani
Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, General
Ehsan ul Haq, visited NATO Headquarters in Brussels in
the same year. In 2007 Jaap de Hoop Scheffer became the first NATO
secretary general to travel to Pakistan. In the same
year Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz visited
NATO Headquarters. The next year President Pervez Musharraf made the
same trip, followed by his Chief of Army Staff,
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, ten months afterward. In January of 2009 NATO chief Scheffer visited
Pakistan to meet with newly installed President Asif
Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani,
Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar, Foreign
Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and army chief General
Kayani. Returning the favor, Kayani paid a visit to NATO
Headquarters in May, and the next month President
Zardari, nine months after assuming his post, traveled
to NATO Headquarters for a meeting with the bloc’s top
governing body, the North Atlantic Council, being the
first elected president of Pakistan to do so. In
October of last year NATO conducted an international
seminar on Pakistan in Brussels which included the
ambassadors of all 28 of the bloc’s member states. In
December NATO launched an Individual Tailored
Cooperation Package to consolidate the integration of
Pakistan. This year Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi was at
NATO Headquarters in February to meet with the new
secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and to
address the North Atlantic Council, and last month
Prime Minister Gilani led a large government
delegation to the same location, where he also met
with Rasmussen and addressed the North Atlantic
Council. On either end of the International Conference on
Afghanistan held in Kabul on July 20, NATO Secretary
General Rasmussen visited Tajikistan, where French
NATO forces have been stationed since 2002 and where
recent reports detail plans for the U.S. to open a
training center [1], and Pakistan. On July 19 Rasmussen met with Tajik Defense
Minister Sherali Khairulloyev and Security Council
Secretary Amirkul Azimov to coordinate a common Afghan
strategy. He arrived in Pakistan on July 21, six days after a
twenty-member Pakistani parliamentary delegation
completed a four-day trip to NATO Headquarters in
Belgium “to share information about the Alliance’s
policies and activities and to strengthen political
dialogue between NATO and elected representatives of
Pakistan.” [2] The group was also taken to the Allied Command
Operations Headquarters, formerly known as Supreme
Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), the central
command of NATO military forces. While in Islamabad this Wednesday, Rasmussen was
accompanied by a large delegation which included NATO
Spokesman James Appathurai and Robert Simmons, NATO’s
Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Security
Cooperation and Partnership and its first Special
Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia. [3]
Simmons was also in Pakistan in May when he spoke at a
conference entitled “NATO’s Transition and its
Relation with Pakistan.” His comments at the time included the assurance
that “Pakistan is NATO’s valued partner and our common
challenge is war in Afghanistan.” A report of his visit stated, “Simmons emphasized
that NATO does not want to limit [itself] to high
level dialogue with Pakistan but also to have
practical cooperation by making use of the instrument
of [an] Individual Cooperation Program to cover
civilian and military affairs” [4], the same name as
that used by NATO for its advanced partnerships with
Israel and Egypt. On May 21 Rasmussen and other NATO officials met
with Pakistani President Zardari and with Chief of
Army Staff General Kayani and Chairman Joint Chiefs of
Staff Committee General Tariq Majid in separate
meetings at the military’s General Headquarters.
During the meeting with General Majid, discussion
“focused on the future NATO strategy for Afghanistan
[and] the status of NATO-Pakistan relations including
a proposed framework to institutionalize enduring,
broad-based and mutually beneficial future
cooperation.” [5] During Zardari’s meeting with Rasmussen, the
Pakistani president stated he “appreciated training
facilities offered by NATO to Pakistani officers and
called for further increasing such facilities,” and
“hail[ed] NATO’s intended support for training
counter-terrorism units.” [6] Last year the Pakistani military launched a
“counterinterrorist” offensive in the Swat Valley and
adjoining parts of the North-West Frontier Province
that dwarfed in comparison fighting on the other side
of the Durand Line, leading to 3,000,000 civilians
being displaced according to the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Oxfam among
other sources. There can be little doubt that the
operation was ordered by Washington. Over the past two years the U.S. has killed over
1,000 people with drone missile attacks in Pakistan’s
Federally Administered Tribal Areas. There have been
reports of NATO helicopter gunship and commando raids
in Pakistan launched from Afghanistan. On July 21 NATO chief Rasmussen said that “Pakistan
and NATO enjoy an important relationship and intend to
build upon it…it goes beyond Afghanistan.” Indeed.
Rasmussen also “commended Pakistan’s operations in the
Tribal Areas….He mentioned the tripartite arrangement
with NATO and said [NATO] would encourage Pakistan to
continue it.” [7] NATO’s first war in Asia and its first ground war
is not limited to Afghanistan. In touting his
organization’s “long-term partnership with Pakistan,”
the Alliance’s secretary general added that NATO’s
presence in Afghanistan and several adjoining nations
was “driven not by calendar, but by commitment.” [8]
NATO is in South and Central Asia to stay. In
Afghanistan, in Pakistan and in the former Soviet
republics of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan,
with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan following suit and
India next in line. (The chairman of the U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, began a
two-day visit to India on July 23, and pledged a
continued “commitment” to South and Central Asia.) In November NATO will endorse its new Strategic
Concept, the first since it began its eastern
expansion at the fiftieth anniversary summit in
Washington, D.C. in 1999. It is NATO’s first 21st
century, first avowedly expeditionary military
doctrine. It is the blueprint for global NATO, with
partners and operations on at least five continents.
1) Afghan War: Petraeus Expands U.S. Military
Presence Throughout Eurasia http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/afghan-war-petraeus-expands-u-s-military-presence-throughout-eurasia 2) North Atlantic Treaty Organization, July 16,
2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/mr-simmons-mission-nato-bases-from-balkans-to-chinese-border 4) Xinhua News Agency, May 21, 2010 Comments 💬 التعليقات |