Not Your Cold War NATO: Alliance To Examine Itself

[American Patriot]

Not Your Cold War NATO: Alliance To Examine Itself

by Jackie Northam








Enlarge Musadeq Sadeq/AP A NATO soldier aims his weapon during a gun battle in Kabul, Afghanistan, in April. NATO is holding a summit in Chicago this weekend, and discussing the future of the alliance is on the agenda.


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May 17, 2012
This weekend, about 60 heads of state and government, and thousands of others will descend on Chicago to attend a NATO summit. The gathering will focus on the alliance's involvement in Afghanistan — and ensuring a long-term commitment to the country.
But the meeting comes at a time of tension within NATO. Discussions will also include the future of NATO itself, and whether it can overcome its shortfalls.
Unilateral Action In Libya
Those shortfalls were clearly illustrated during the military operation in Libya last year. Martin Butcher, an arms control advocate who writes the blog NATO Monitor, says there was little cohesion among the allies. France kicked off the international military intervention on March 19, just two days after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution authorizing all necessary means to protect Libyan civilians.
About 20 French fighter jets roared across Libya, striking government targets near Benghazi, where the rebellion against Moammar Gadhafi began. France launched the jets with little notice to its NATO allies, Butcher says.
"Certainly it was seen as France was very eager to get into the fight and didn't really coordinate with NATO or with allies," he says. "It was seen very much as [former President Nicolas Sarkozy] trying to get political advantage out of the situation to make France look good."
Butcher says France's unilateral action dismayed the allies. Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, says once the U.S. destroyed Libya's air defense system, the French and the British ostensibly took the military lead, with the U.S. playing a support role. But Barno says that quickly changed.
"The United States had to underwrite quite a bit of the military mission there by providing a lot of the military capabilities with attack aircraft, command and control aircraft, with intelligence and surveillance aircraft," he says.
Barno says the U.S. ultimately had to contribute "sizable amounts" of munitions, precision-guided weapons that the alliance had run out of very quickly.
Barno says the Libya operation illustrates what many perceive as NATO's primary shortcoming: that one member nation — the U.S. — is shouldering most of the financial and military burden.
Contrasting Today With Early Years
One of the most public criticisms came from Robert Gates. In one of his final speeches as U.S. Defense Secretary last year, he sharply rebuked the alliance. He complained about Europe's lack of political will and its dwindling defense budgets. Gates said the U.S. Congress was getting tired of footing the bill, and warned of a "dim, if not dismal, future" for the trans-Atlantic alliance.
This was a far cry from the solidarity of NATO's early days, when the Soviet Union represented a real threat. Arms control advocate Butcher says when faced with a common enemy during the Cold War, the NATO alliance was cohesive in its purpose.
"In the post-Cold War world, it's just not like that. NATO members pick and choose the operations they take part in. Even when they get into an operation, they pick and choose the things they'll do within that operation," Butcher says.
Take Afghanistan: Many European members of NATO would not allow their soldiers to fight. Instead, they did development work in the more peaceful areas of the country. Barno, who at one time was a U.S. commander in Afghanistan, says this left a real impression on young American officers who could someday be steering the U.S. military.
"Military officers now, they're in their 20s and 30s. They didn't work with German military units facing off against the Soviets," he says, "and their experience in NATO is what they've seen in Afghanistan over the last seven or eight or nine years. And it's generally not been positive."
In Search Of Efficiency — And Shared Burden
Barno says the almost decade-long involvement in Afghanistan has led to a collective fatigue among European allies. It has also produced questions of whether NATO should be involved in a conflict that is not in Europe's backyard.
Mark Jacobson, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, says that thinking is misguided. He says the reality is that, today, no area of the world is out of bounds.
"If you think that the threats from outside the traditional European boundaries of the alliance won't impact what's happening in Europe and North America, then those folks haven't been paying attention to the world over the last 20 years," Jacobson says.
There is an effort to reshape the alliance, such as enhancing partnerships with non-NATO states and developing better military capabilities by better pooling resources and the like, says Jim Townsend, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy.
"Even during this era of austerity, where so many of our allies are caught up in the financial squeeze of the eurozone crisis ... we're all trying to come up with ways in which we can ensure our defense in the most efficient way possible and in a way that doesn't depend on just the United States," he says.
Townsend says this will be one of the key themes when NATO members descend on Chicago this weekend.

[American Patriot]

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
May 20, 2012

Fact Sheet: Chicago Summit – NATO Capabilities

NATO remains an essential transatlantic link and force multiplier for the United States, our Allies, and partners. The Chicago Summit provides us a new opportunity to reaffirm and refine the vision that binds Allies together and sets us on a course to maintain and develop the capabilities NATO needs to remain an essential source of global stability.
At the 2010 Lisbon Summit, NATO leaders adopted a Strategic Concept that committed NATO to meeting the security challenges of the 21^st century, from terrorism to ballistic missile and cyber attacks to nuclear proliferation. At the NATO 2012 Summit, NATO’s leadership outlined a clear vision of how NATO will maintain the capabilities we need, utilizing all available defense resources and ensuring the Alliance is greater than the sum of its parts. This vision, enshrined in a new document titled “NATO Forces 2020,” helps set NATO’s priorities for investing in capabilities the Alliance needs to move forward over the next decade. This framework calls for realistic efforts to maintain and develop multinational capabilities despite defense budget cuts in the United States and Europe. It also institutionalizes lessons learned from recent and current operations, ensures we can maintain interoperability among Allies and with partners, and identifies critical capabilities gaps.

***

At the Lisbon Summit, Heads of State and Government directed a review of the Alliance’s deterrence and defense posture to ensure the Alliance maintains the appropriate mix of conventional, nuclear and missile defense capabilities needed to meet the security challenges we face. That review, called the Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR), was concluded and endorsed in Chicago. The nuclear element of the review reaffirms NATO’s commitment to work to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons, while remaining a nuclear Alliance for as long as nuclear weapons exist. It commits the Alliance to ensuring NATO’s nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure, and effective. The DDPR also makes clear that the Alliance is prepared to consider, in the context of reciprocal steps by Russia, further reductions in non-strategic nuclear weapons assigned to the Alliance. Finally, the DDPR outlines the priorities NATO needs to address to ensure we can fulfill the three core missions identified in the new strategic concept, namely: collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security.
***

"To put it simply, our new missile defense architecture in Europe will provide stronger, smarter, and swifter defenses of American forces and America's Allies. It is more comprehensive than the previous program; it deploys capabilities that are proven and cost-effective; and it sustains and builds upon our commitment to protect the U.S. homeland against long-range ballistic missile threats; and it ensures and enhances the protection of all our NATO Allies."

– President Obama, September 17, 2009

In September 2009, the President directed the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) for missile defense to be implemented in a NATO context. At the Lisbon Summit in November 2010, NATO made the historic decision to endorse a missile defense capability whose aim is to provide full coverage and protection for all NATO European populations, territory, and forces against ballistic missile attack. EPAA was welcomed as the U.S. national contribution to NATO missile defense. NATO also agreed in Lisbon to expand its current missile defense command, control, and communications capabilities to be able to effectively integrate additional voluntary contributions from other Allies. Since then, Phase 1 of the EPAA, including deployment of A radar in Turkey and an Aegis ship in the eastern Mediterranean, has been successfully achieved.
In Chicago, NATO declared the achievement of an Interim Capability for NATO ballistic missile defense, an important step towards fulfilling the commitment made at Lisbon. This means that NATO has initiated a capability that, although limited in its initial phase, can provide real protection against ballistic missile attack. With initial NATO command and control procedures in place, the President has directed the Secretary of Defense to transfer operational control of the U.S. radar in Turkey to NATO. The radar’s information, combined with the NATO command and control system, gives NATO missile defense commanders a comprehensive and real-time operational picture, enabling them to employ the available missile defense assets effectively.
What does Interim Capability mean?

• NATO has agreed on the command and control procedures for ballistic missile defense, designated Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) as the commander for this mission, and through missile defense exercises has tested and validated a command and control capability funded by all 28 Allies.
• Spain, Turkey, Romania and Poland have agreed to host key U.S. missile defense assets.
• Allies have committed to invest over $1 billion in the command, control, and communications infrastructure needed to support NATO missile defense.
• The President directed the transfer of operational control of the AN/TPY-2 radar deployed in Turkey to NATO.
• U.S. missile defense-capable ships in Europe are able to operate under NATO operational control when necessary.
• Interim capability is scheduled to be followed by the milestones of initial operational capability in 2015 and full operational capability in 2018.

***

The Libya operation highlighted intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance shortfalls within the Alliance. In Chicago, NATO signed a contract to move forward with the Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) system, which uses unarmed drones to provide crucial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance information to our military commanders so that they may monitor developing situations and identify potential threats. This is a capability that would not otherwise be available to many Allies without NATO’s facilitation. By pooling our resources and sharing the burden, we can provide better security for every Ally at a lower cost.

• A group of 14 Allies (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the United States) has agreed to acquire five unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and the associated command and control ground stations.
• NATO will operate and maintain the system on behalf of the Alliance with common funding from all 28 Allies.

***

In Chicago, Allied leaders reached agreement to extend the operation of Baltic Air Policing, a mission that demonstrates the Alliance’s commitment to collective defense. Because Baltic skies are policed by Allies who already possess supersonic fighters, the Baltic states can forego acquisition of expensive fighter aircraft and focus their security resources on other high-priority NATO capabilities and operations. This program allows economies of scale through the pooling and sharing of existing or future air assets, particularly important for Allies faced with the replacement of aging aircraft in the coming decade.

***

Despite tough economic times, the milestones NATO has achieved on missile defense and the Alliance Ground Surveillance system and other important initiatives have shown the Alliance’s ability to work effectively together to procure new capabilities and position our military forces to meet emerging threats. With “NATO Forces 2020” the Alliance has taken an important first step toward providing NATO with the tools it needs to tackle 21^st century challenges.

[American Patriot]

May 21, 2012 7:50 AM



NATO declares European missile shield up and running


(CBS)


Last Updated 8:23 a.m. ET
(CBS/AP) CHICAGO - NATO says that its European missile shield is up and running with a basic capability to shoot down incoming missiles.


NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Sunday the declaration of "interim capability" at the alliance's summit in Chicago is a first step toward a goal of establishing full coverage of Europe by 2018.



A final stage is planned for 2022 that would also provide coverage of the United States from Europe.


The Obama administration has touted the progress as a sign of alliance solidarity. But it is mainly paid for and operated by the United States.



In Chicago, the administration turned over operational control of parts of the system to NATO.



The administration said that other NATO allies committed over $1 billion to support infrastructure for the system.


"The United States and our European allies [are] investing in common security, and it is an excellent example of the renewed culture of cooperation, which we call 'smart defense,'" Rasmussen told reporters.


NATO: Obama warns of "hard days" ahead in Afghanistan


NATO has also stated that it wants to cooperate with Russia on the missile shield, but has rejected a proposal to run the shield jointly.


Russia has opposed the missile defense system believing the program is aimed at its missiles; the U.S. has said the system is designed to counter a missile threat from a rogue nation, such as Iran.


It has been a sore point between the two nations since President George W. Bush announced plans to install interceptor missiles in Eastern Europe, what Moscow considered its backyard. Russia maintains the system could undermine its nuclear deterrent, while Poles and Czechs saw it as protection against Russian intervention.



Russia ups rhetoric over missile shield

Putin calls NATO "relic of the Cold War"

Medvedev: Russia must counter missile shield


In August 2008, after a year and a half of negotiations, American and Polish officials signed an agreement in which the U.S. would augment the country's defenses with Patriot missiles.



In 2009 President Obama announced a redesign of the planned missile deployment - what Defense Secretary Robert Gates called an "outdated" plan, given advances in U.S. missile interceptor and missile-tracking sensor technologies.



Last year Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed concerns that the modified defense system pursued by Mr. Obama could still be upgraded to counter Russia's arsenal.


Obama: US, Russia working on missile defense


On Sunday France's new president Francois Hollande said that Russia and other countries should not feel threatened by the planned NATO missile defense system.


Speaking at the NATO summit in Chicago, Hollande also laid out four conditions for French support for the anti-missile defense - including cost, rules of engagement, industrial support for European contractors and compatibility with France's nuclear deterrent.