Pentagon Consolidates Control Over Balkans:
US Military Presence in the former Yugoslavia
By Rick Rozoff
Global Research, May 30, 2012
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31128
Ahead of, during and after
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 25th summit in Chicago on May
20-21, the Pentagon has continued expanding its permanent military
presence in the former Yugoslavia and the rest of the Balkan region.
The military bloc's two-day
conclave in Chicago formalized, among several other initiatives
including the initial activation of its U.S.-dominated interceptor
missile system and Global Hawk-equipped Alliance Ground Surveillance
operations, a new category of what NATO calls aspirant countries next in
line for full Alliance membership. Three of them are former Yugoslav
federal republics - Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro - and the fourth is
Georgia, conflicts involving which could be the most immediate cause of
a confrontation between the world's two major nuclear powers.
This year new NATO partnership
formats have sprung up like poisonous toadstools after a summer rain:
Aspirants countries, the Partnership Cooperation Menu, the Individual
Partnership and Cooperation Programme, the Connected Forces Initiative
and partners across the globe among them.
The military bloc's
inauguration as an active, aggressive military force in Bosnia and the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s laid the groundwork for the
U.S.'s already unmatched military to move troops, hardware and bases
into Southeast Europe for actions there and to points east and south:
The Middle East, the Caucasus, North Africa and Central and South Asia.
Since 2004 several nations in
the east and west Balkans - Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia and
Albania - have been incorporated into the alliance as full members and
the remainder - Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and the generally
unrecognized Republic of Kosovo - have in the first four instances
joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program and in the last had its
nascent armed forces, the Kosovo Security Force, built from scratch by
the leading alliance powers.
Macedonia, which would have
become a full member in 2009 except for the lingering name dispute with
Greece, and Montenegro have been granted the Membership Action Plan, the
final stage before full accession, and Bosnia will be accorded the same
once the quasi-autonomous Republika Srpska is deemed properly stripped
of the last vestige of self-governance.
NATO and the wars waged under
its command, not only in the Balkans but in Afghanistan and all but
officially in Iraq, have provided the Pentagon the mammoth Camp
Bondsteel in Kosovo and three major air bases in Bulgaria and Romania as
well as headquarters for new military task forces and jumping-off
points for "downrange" operations outside Europe. The U.S. Department of
Defense has also acquired subservient legionaries for wars in Asia and
Africa and training grounds for American and multinational expeditionary
units employed in 21st century neo-colonial wars far beyond the
Euro-Atlantic area. Romania will host 24 U.S. Standard Missile-3
interceptors starting in three years.
NATO's Cooperative Longbow and
Cooperative Lancer 2012 command and field exercises started in
Macedonia on the second day of the Chicago NATO summit, May 21, and
ended on May 29. The largest of four such exercises held within the
framework of the Partnership for Peace program - "to train, exercise,
and promote the interoperability of Partnership for Peace forces using
NATO standards" - to date, this year's Longbow/Lancer drills included
2,200 troops from several NATO and a dozen Partnership for Peace
nations, a total of 25 countries including the U.S.
On May 26 U.S. Army Europe and
U.S. Air Forces in Europe launched the Immediate Response 2012 exercise
in Croatia with military personnel from the host country, Albania,
Bosnia, Montenegro and Slovenia. Macedonia and Serbia sent observers.
A report on the opening of the exercise posted on the website of U.S. European Command appended this paragraph:
"U.S. Army Europe is uniquely
positioned to advance American strategic interests across Eurasia,
building teams, assuring allies and deterring enemies. The relationships
we build during more than 1,000 theater security cooperation events in
more than 40 countries each year lead directly to support for U.S.
actions such as in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya."
Balkan states Albania, Bosnia,
Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania and Slovenia deployed troops to
Iraq after 2003 and all those nations as well as Montenegro (which
became independent in 2006) have troops under NATO command in
Afghanistan currently.
NATO's Allied Joint Force Command Naples has military missions in Bosnia, Macedonia and Serbia.
On May 28 the U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff began a two-week disaster management and crisis response
exercise, Shared Resilience 2012, in Bosnia. In addition to the U.S.
and Bosnia, participating nations include Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia,
Montenegro, Norway, Serbia and Slovenia.
Immediately before the NATO
summit, the U.S. Marines Corps' Black Sea Rotational Force 2012 held
multinational exercises near Constanta, Romania from May 7-18. The Black
Sea Rotational Force was established in 2010 and last year doubled the
duration of its training exercises in the Balkans, the Black Sea region
and the South Caucasus from three to six months annually.
Now spending half the year in
the geopolitically vital area, the Black Sea Rotational Force recently
announced its mission of building "enduring partnerships with 19 nations
throughout Eastern Europe.” The U.S. Marines are being hosted by
Romania from April 2 to September 1. Prior to that Black Sea Rotational
Force 2012 participated in the Agile Spirit 2012 exercise in Georgia in
March.
U.S. Army Europe's Task Force
East, employing Stryker combat vehicles, also operates out of Romania as
well as Bulgaria: The Mihal Kogălniceanu Airfield and the Babadag
Training Area in the first country and the Novo Selo Training Area in
the second. In 2009 Task Force East spent three months training in
Romania and Bulgaria, primarily preparing troops from the U.S. and the
two host nations for operations in Afghanistan.
This
year NATO officially identified Afghanistan and Iraq as military
partners, in the category of partners across the globe. Since the end of
NATO operations against Libya last October, the bloc's secretary
general and its American ambassador, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Ivo
Daalder, have mentioned Libya joining NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue
military partnership with the other nations of North Africa.
Each NATO military operation
over the past 17 years, in Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya,
has provided the alliance with bases, centers, troops and logistics for
later and for future wars. Air bases in Bulgaria and Romania were
employed for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and, as noted
above, every Balkan nation but Serbia has supplied troops for the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pentagon and NATO military personnel, aircraft,
ships and radar in Southeast Europe can be used in attacks on Syria and
Iran and in any new armed conflict in the South Caucasus, such as the
five-day war between Georgia and Russia four years ago.
The U.S. and its NATO allies are expanding their military presence and infrastructure ever closer to new theaters of war.
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