4 New Messages
Digest #4689
Messages
Fri Apr 26, 2013 6:00 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.civil.
Civil Georgia
April 24, 2013
Georgian FM Visits Brussels
Tbilisi: Georgia’s Foreign Minister, Maia Panjikidze participated in NATO and ISAF partner nations’ foreign ministerial meeting on Tuesday and will meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday in Brussels.
Panjikidze said that Georgia, which now has over 1,600 troops in Afghanistan, making the country highest per capita troop contributor to ISAF, reiterated its commitment to NATO-led mission in Afghanistan and reaffirmed its intention to continue its contribution after 2014, when the NATO combat mission is due to end.
She said that Georgia was also offering NATO to use its territory as a route for reverse transit of ISAF forces and cargoes from Afghanistan, in particular by using railway link, which is due to be completed later this year and which will link Azerbaijan and Turkey via Georgia.
In a declaration adopted after a trilateral meeting in Batumi in March, 2013 foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey underscored “the necessity of timely conclusion of construction” of the Baku-Tbilisi-
Also on April 23, the Georgian Foreign Minister participated together with counterparts from three other NATO aspirant countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina; Montenegro and Macedonia, in a meeting with three NATO-member states – Poland, Romania and Turkey.
Panjikidze said it was an initiative of these three NATO-member states to initiate the new 3+4 format to engage more actively with four aspirant countries.
On Wednesday Panjikidze is expected to meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Brussels to discuss “important details” of bilateral relations, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said.
============
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Stop NATO website and articles:
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Civil Georgia
April 24, 2013
Georgian FM Visits Brussels
Tbilisi: Georgia’s Foreign Minister, Maia Panjikidze participated in NATO and ISAF partner nations’ foreign ministerial meeting on Tuesday and will meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday in Brussels.
Panjikidze said that Georgia, which now has over 1,600 troops in Afghanistan, making the country highest per capita troop contributor to ISAF, reiterated its commitment to NATO-led mission in Afghanistan and reaffirmed its intention to continue its contribution after 2014, when the NATO combat mission is due to end.
She said that Georgia was also offering NATO to use its territory as a route for reverse transit of ISAF forces and cargoes from Afghanistan, in particular by using railway link, which is due to be completed later this year and which will link Azerbaijan and Turkey via Georgia.
In a declaration adopted after a trilateral meeting in Batumi in March, 2013 foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey underscored “the necessity of timely conclusion of construction” of the Baku-Tbilisi-
Also on April 23, the Georgian Foreign Minister participated together with counterparts from three other NATO aspirant countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina; Montenegro and Macedonia, in a meeting with three NATO-member states – Poland, Romania and Turkey.
Panjikidze said it was an initiative of these three NATO-member states to initiate the new 3+4 format to engage more actively with four aspirant countries.
On Wednesday Panjikidze is expected to meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Brussels to discuss “important details” of bilateral relations, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said.
============
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http://groups.
Stop NATO website and articles:
http://rickrozoff.
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stopnato-subscribe@
============
Fri Apr 26, 2013 2:19 pm (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://rickrozoff.
Stop NATO
April 26, 2013
NATO's Worldwide Expansion in the Post-Cold World Era
Rick Rozoff
One of the most significant developments of the post-Cold War era, and certainly the most ominous, is the transformation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military bloc created by the United States during the genesis of the Cold War in 1949, into one that has grown to encompass the entirety of Europe, has expanded military partnerships throughout the world and has waged war on three continents.
In 2006 Kurt Volker, at the time with the State Department and two years afterwards U.S. ambassador to NATO, boasted that the year before NATO had been “engaged in eight simultaneous operations on four continents.”
Two years later the State Department’s Daniel Fried told the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on Europe:
“When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, NATO was an Alliance of 16 members and no partners. Today, NATO has 26 members – with 2 new invitees, prospective membership for others, and over 20 partners in Europe and Eurasia, seven in the Mediterranean, four in the Persian Gulf, and others from around the world.”
Although then-Secretary of State James Baker had assured Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at the time of German reunification in 1990 that NATO would not be moved one inch eastward, the very act of merger occurring as it did led to the German Democratic Republic being absorbed not only into the Federal Republic but NATO and hence the latter immediately moving east to the borders of Poland and Czechoslovakia and closer to that of the Soviet Union.
The two invited nations Fried mentioned above are Albania and Croatia, which became full members of the military bloc in 2009, completing a decade of expansion that saw NATO membership grow by 75 percent from 16 to 28. NATO expansion to the east has provided the Pentagon and its Western allies with air bases and other military facilities in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Romania for wars to the east and south.
Macedonia, which would also have been absorbed in 2009 except for the name dispute with NATO member Greece, is now in a new category of nations being groomed for full NATO membership the alliance refers to as aspirant countries. The others currently are Bosnia, Georgia and Montenegro.
With the Partnership for Peace program that was used to promote twelve new Eastern European into NATO between 1999 and 2009 – every non-Soviet member of the Warsaw Pact and three former Soviet republics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) – the Mediterranean Dialogue, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and, as of last year, the newly formed Partners Across the Globe (whose initial members are Afghanistan, Australia, Iraq, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan and South Korea), NATO members and partners number at least 70 nations, well over a third of those in the world.
In January of 2012 a meeting of NATO’s Military Committee Chiefs of Defense Staff was conducted with top military representatives of 67 nations.
The Partners Across the Globe and longer-standing military partnerships are slated to grow in all parts of the world. Among the more than 50 nations that have provided NATO with troop contingents for the war in South Asia are additional Asia-Pacific states not covered by other international NATO partnership formats like the Partnership for Peace (22 nations in Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia), the Mediterranean Dialogue (seven nations in North Africa and the Middle East, with Libya to be the eighth) and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, which targets the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates).
Those Asian states – Malaysia, Singapore and Tonga – are likely the next candidates for the new global partnership, as are Latin American troop providers like El Salvador and Colombia. The inclusion of the last-named marks the expansion of NATO, through memberships and partnerships, to all six inhabited continents.
Iraq and Yemen are likely prospects for inclusion in the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. Mediterranean Dialogue members Jordan and Morocco applied for membership in the Gulf Cooperation Council (which is composed of the Arab world’s other six monarchies) during NATO’s war against Libya in 2011, for which Gulf Cooperation Council and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative members Qatar and the United Arab Emirates supplied dozens of warplanes.
If the West succeeds if effecting the overthrow of the Syrian government, Syria and Lebanon will be targeted for membership in NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue. (As will Palestine if and when it is recognized by the United Nations.) With the new administration in Cyprus confirming its intention to immediately join the Partnership for Peace, every nation in the Mediterranean Sea Basin will be a NATO member and partner. The integration of Cyprus will also complete the process of recruiting every European nation (excluding mini-states Andorra, Lichtenstein, Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican) into the NATO orbit.
In the past three years there also has been discussion about NATO establishing a collective partnership arrangement, which could include individual partnerships as well, with the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which are, in addition to Malaysia and Singapore, mentioned above, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.
Similar efforts have been made by NATO to forge a collective partnership with the 54-member African Union. All African nations are members of the African Union except for Morocco and the fledgling state of South Sudan. All African countries except Egypt are in the area of responsibility of U.S. Africa Command, which before achieving full operational capacity in 2008 was created and developed by U.S. European Command, whose top military commander is simultaneously that of NATO.
The current NATO secretary general has bruited the intention to cultivate formal relations with India and China, likely to be based on the bilateral NATO-Russia Council model.
There has been discussion in recent years, including an explicit call by a Portuguese foreign minister for precisely such an initiative, for NATO to expand into the South Atlantic as well by building military partnerships with countries like Brazil and South Africa. (Six warships with the Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 held exercises with the South African navy in 2007 in the course of circumnavigating the African continent. Also in that year the same NATO naval force conducted operations in the Caribbean, the first time alliance warships entered that sea.)
In conjunction with the U.S., NATO is striving to assemble the remnants of defunct or dormant Cold War-era military blocs in the Asia-Pacific region, all modeled after NATO itself – the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Security Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America (ANZUS) – to replicate in the east against China what NATO expansion has accomplished in Europe over the past 14 years in relation to Russia: its exclusion, isolation and encirclement by military bases, naval forces and interceptor missile installations.
As the Pentagon and NATO are implementing plans to deploy land-based interceptor missiles in Romania and Poland and sea-based equivalents on guided missile warships in, first, the Mediterranean and plausibly afterward in the Black, Baltic and Norwegian Seas, so the U.S. has recruited Japan, South Korea and Australia into its global sea- and land-based missile shield grid, with a recent report indicating the Pentagon plans to add the Philippines to the list with the deployment there of an Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance interceptor missile mobile system of the sort already stationed in Japan, Israel and Turkey.
Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and other NATO leaders routinely assert that the European Phased Adaptive Approach missile system is aimed not only against Iran but North Korea – and Syria. In April of this year Rasmussen became the first NATO secretary general to visit South Korea. Days earlier his second-in-command, Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow, spoke of the possibility of invoking NATO’s Article 5 mutual military assistance clause against North Korea.
Since 1999 the North Atlantic bloc has waged air and ground wars in Europe (Yugoslavia)
Post-Cold War NATO has repeatedly and without disguise identified its purview and its area of operations to be international in scope, and over the past 22 years its efforts to achieve that objective have steadily accelerated to the point where the military alliance is well poised to supplant the United Nations as the main, indeed the exclusive, arbiter of conflicts not only between but within nations throughout the world. A U.S.-dominated armed bloc which includes three nuclear powers and accounts for an estimated 70 percent of global military spending has expanded deployments, operations and partnerships around the planet.
Four years ago Hans von Sponeck, former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, wrote a scathing denunciation called The United Nations and NATO: Which security and for whom? for a Swiss journal in which, in a section called “21st century NATO incompatible with UN Charter,” he stated:
“In 1999, NATO acknowledged that it was seeking to orient itself according to a new fundamental strategic concept. From a narrow military defense alliance it was to become a broad-based alliance for the protection of the vital resources needs of its members. Besides the defense of member states’ borders, it set itself new purposes such as assured access to energy sources and the right to intervene in ‘movements of large numbers of persons’ and in conflicts far from the boarders of NATO countries. The readiness of the new alliance to include other countries, particularly those that had previously been part of the Soviet Union, shows how the character of this military alliance has altered.”
“[T]he United Nations monopoly of the use of force, especially as specified in Article 51 of the Charter, was no longer accepted according to the 1999 NATO doctrine.
“NATO’s territorial scope, until then limited to the Euro-Atlantic region, was expanded by its member to encompass the whole world in keeping with a strategic context that was global in its sweep.”
For the past 18 years NATO has been attempting to supersede and ultimately replace the United Nations, as von Sponeck warned, initially by promoting itself as the military wing of the UN by leading multinational military forces under post-conflict mandates in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia – 60,000 troops in the first and 50,000 in the second case at peak strength. (The first two missions followed, respectively, a NATO bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serb Republic and 78-day air war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to be sure.) A comparable situation existed in Iraq, with NATO supporting the foreign occupation of the nation from 2004-2011. In fact all the post-Cold War NATO inductees – Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia – were compelled to supply troops for Iraq as proof of their loyalty to NATO before and shortly after their accession.
And for Afghanistan. But unlike the NATO missions in the above former Yugoslav territories, that in Afghanistan was to an active war zone, constituting NATO’s first ground war and first war outside Europe.
After the military alliance took over the International Security Assistance Force, it came to command almost all of the 152,000 foreign troops in the nation and soldiers from over 50 Troop Contributing Nations (the official designation)
Those nations are:
All 28 current NATO members: The U.S., Albania, Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey.
Partnership for Peace adjuncts: Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Finland, Georgia, Ireland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine.
Others: Australia (Partners Across the Globe), Bahrain (Istanbul Cooperation Initiative), El Salvador, Jordan (Mediterranean Dialogue), Malaysia, Mongolia (Partners Across the Globe), New Zealand (Partners Across the Globe), Singapore, South Korea (Partners Across the Globe), Tonga and the United Arab Emirates (Istanbul Cooperation Initiative).
Several additional nations supplied military and security personnel to serve under NATO command in Afghanistan without being formal Troop Contributing Nations such as Colombia, Egypt (Mediterranean Dialogue), Japan (Partners Across the Globe), Moldova (Partnership for Peace) and no doubt others. Efforts were made by the U.S. and NATO to secure troop contributions from such nations as Bangladesh and Kazakhstan.
The governments and militaries of Afghanistan itself and neighboring Pakistan are linked to NATO under the Afghanistan-
NATO has air and other military bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Those three nations have also been used by NATO as part of the Northern Distribution Network and other transit routes that include as well Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Iraq, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, etc.
The war in Afghanistan, the longest in the nation’s history as well as in that of the U.S., has supplied NATO with an almost 12-year opportunity to consolidate an international military network and to develop the operational and command integration of the armed forces of almost 60 nations. This is the global NATO that among others the Obama administration’s first ambassador to the alliance, Ivo Daalder, has openly touted under that exact name since the beginning of this century.
Many NATO members and partners, particularly former Soviet federal republics in the Baltic Sea region and in the South Caucasus, have used the Afghan war to gain combat experience for their armed forces to be used in conflicts in their own neighborhoods: Georgia, for example, in preparing for any resumption of armed conflict with South Ossetia and Russia such as occurred in August 2008.
Just as NATO has followed the U.S. into the Balkans and Afghanistan, into the global interceptor missile system and so-called energy security (in fact energy war) initiatives, so it has joined Washington in the new scramble in the Arctic Ocean, cyber warfare operations and the attempt to command the world’s strategic shipping lanes and choke points.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, its name now archaic as most of its members and all of its dozens of partners do not border the Atlantic Ocean, north or south, is well advanced in its U.S.-crafted mission to expand into history’s largest and first international military bloc and an unprecedented threat to world peace.
============
Stop NATO e-mail list home page with archives and search engine:
http://groups.
Stop NATO website and articles:
http://rickrozoff.
To subscribe for individual e-mails or the daily digest, unsubscribe, and otherwise change subscription status:
stopnato-subscribe@
============
Stop NATO
April 26, 2013
NATO's Worldwide Expansion in the Post-Cold World Era
Rick Rozoff
One of the most significant developments of the post-Cold War era, and certainly the most ominous, is the transformation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military bloc created by the United States during the genesis of the Cold War in 1949, into one that has grown to encompass the entirety of Europe, has expanded military partnerships throughout the world and has waged war on three continents.
In 2006 Kurt Volker, at the time with the State Department and two years afterwards U.S. ambassador to NATO, boasted that the year before NATO had been “engaged in eight simultaneous operations on four continents.”
Two years later the State Department’s Daniel Fried told the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on Europe:
“When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, NATO was an Alliance of 16 members and no partners. Today, NATO has 26 members – with 2 new invitees, prospective membership for others, and over 20 partners in Europe and Eurasia, seven in the Mediterranean, four in the Persian Gulf, and others from around the world.”
Although then-Secretary of State James Baker had assured Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at the time of German reunification in 1990 that NATO would not be moved one inch eastward, the very act of merger occurring as it did led to the German Democratic Republic being absorbed not only into the Federal Republic but NATO and hence the latter immediately moving east to the borders of Poland and Czechoslovakia and closer to that of the Soviet Union.
The two invited nations Fried mentioned above are Albania and Croatia, which became full members of the military bloc in 2009, completing a decade of expansion that saw NATO membership grow by 75 percent from 16 to 28. NATO expansion to the east has provided the Pentagon and its Western allies with air bases and other military facilities in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Romania for wars to the east and south.
Macedonia, which would also have been absorbed in 2009 except for the name dispute with NATO member Greece, is now in a new category of nations being groomed for full NATO membership the alliance refers to as aspirant countries. The others currently are Bosnia, Georgia and Montenegro.
With the Partnership for Peace program that was used to promote twelve new Eastern European into NATO between 1999 and 2009 – every non-Soviet member of the Warsaw Pact and three former Soviet republics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) – the Mediterranean Dialogue, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and, as of last year, the newly formed Partners Across the Globe (whose initial members are Afghanistan, Australia, Iraq, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan and South Korea), NATO members and partners number at least 70 nations, well over a third of those in the world.
In January of 2012 a meeting of NATO’s Military Committee Chiefs of Defense Staff was conducted with top military representatives of 67 nations.
The Partners Across the Globe and longer-standing military partnerships are slated to grow in all parts of the world. Among the more than 50 nations that have provided NATO with troop contingents for the war in South Asia are additional Asia-Pacific states not covered by other international NATO partnership formats like the Partnership for Peace (22 nations in Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia), the Mediterranean Dialogue (seven nations in North Africa and the Middle East, with Libya to be the eighth) and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, which targets the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates).
Those Asian states – Malaysia, Singapore and Tonga – are likely the next candidates for the new global partnership, as are Latin American troop providers like El Salvador and Colombia. The inclusion of the last-named marks the expansion of NATO, through memberships and partnerships, to all six inhabited continents.
Iraq and Yemen are likely prospects for inclusion in the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. Mediterranean Dialogue members Jordan and Morocco applied for membership in the Gulf Cooperation Council (which is composed of the Arab world’s other six monarchies) during NATO’s war against Libya in 2011, for which Gulf Cooperation Council and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative members Qatar and the United Arab Emirates supplied dozens of warplanes.
If the West succeeds if effecting the overthrow of the Syrian government, Syria and Lebanon will be targeted for membership in NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue. (As will Palestine if and when it is recognized by the United Nations.) With the new administration in Cyprus confirming its intention to immediately join the Partnership for Peace, every nation in the Mediterranean Sea Basin will be a NATO member and partner. The integration of Cyprus will also complete the process of recruiting every European nation (excluding mini-states Andorra, Lichtenstein, Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican) into the NATO orbit.
In the past three years there also has been discussion about NATO establishing a collective partnership arrangement, which could include individual partnerships as well, with the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which are, in addition to Malaysia and Singapore, mentioned above, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.
Similar efforts have been made by NATO to forge a collective partnership with the 54-member African Union. All African nations are members of the African Union except for Morocco and the fledgling state of South Sudan. All African countries except Egypt are in the area of responsibility of U.S. Africa Command, which before achieving full operational capacity in 2008 was created and developed by U.S. European Command, whose top military commander is simultaneously that of NATO.
The current NATO secretary general has bruited the intention to cultivate formal relations with India and China, likely to be based on the bilateral NATO-Russia Council model.
There has been discussion in recent years, including an explicit call by a Portuguese foreign minister for precisely such an initiative, for NATO to expand into the South Atlantic as well by building military partnerships with countries like Brazil and South Africa. (Six warships with the Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 held exercises with the South African navy in 2007 in the course of circumnavigating the African continent. Also in that year the same NATO naval force conducted operations in the Caribbean, the first time alliance warships entered that sea.)
In conjunction with the U.S., NATO is striving to assemble the remnants of defunct or dormant Cold War-era military blocs in the Asia-Pacific region, all modeled after NATO itself – the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Security Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America (ANZUS) – to replicate in the east against China what NATO expansion has accomplished in Europe over the past 14 years in relation to Russia: its exclusion, isolation and encirclement by military bases, naval forces and interceptor missile installations.
As the Pentagon and NATO are implementing plans to deploy land-based interceptor missiles in Romania and Poland and sea-based equivalents on guided missile warships in, first, the Mediterranean and plausibly afterward in the Black, Baltic and Norwegian Seas, so the U.S. has recruited Japan, South Korea and Australia into its global sea- and land-based missile shield grid, with a recent report indicating the Pentagon plans to add the Philippines to the list with the deployment there of an Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance interceptor missile mobile system of the sort already stationed in Japan, Israel and Turkey.
Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and other NATO leaders routinely assert that the European Phased Adaptive Approach missile system is aimed not only against Iran but North Korea – and Syria. In April of this year Rasmussen became the first NATO secretary general to visit South Korea. Days earlier his second-in-command, Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow, spoke of the possibility of invoking NATO’s Article 5 mutual military assistance clause against North Korea.
Since 1999 the North Atlantic bloc has waged air and ground wars in Europe (Yugoslavia)
Post-Cold War NATO has repeatedly and without disguise identified its purview and its area of operations to be international in scope, and over the past 22 years its efforts to achieve that objective have steadily accelerated to the point where the military alliance is well poised to supplant the United Nations as the main, indeed the exclusive, arbiter of conflicts not only between but within nations throughout the world. A U.S.-dominated armed bloc which includes three nuclear powers and accounts for an estimated 70 percent of global military spending has expanded deployments, operations and partnerships around the planet.
Four years ago Hans von Sponeck, former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, wrote a scathing denunciation called The United Nations and NATO: Which security and for whom? for a Swiss journal in which, in a section called “21st century NATO incompatible with UN Charter,” he stated:
“In 1999, NATO acknowledged that it was seeking to orient itself according to a new fundamental strategic concept. From a narrow military defense alliance it was to become a broad-based alliance for the protection of the vital resources needs of its members. Besides the defense of member states’ borders, it set itself new purposes such as assured access to energy sources and the right to intervene in ‘movements of large numbers of persons’ and in conflicts far from the boarders of NATO countries. The readiness of the new alliance to include other countries, particularly those that had previously been part of the Soviet Union, shows how the character of this military alliance has altered.”
“[T]he United Nations monopoly of the use of force, especially as specified in Article 51 of the Charter, was no longer accepted according to the 1999 NATO doctrine.
“NATO’s territorial scope, until then limited to the Euro-Atlantic region, was expanded by its member to encompass the whole world in keeping with a strategic context that was global in its sweep.”
For the past 18 years NATO has been attempting to supersede and ultimately replace the United Nations, as von Sponeck warned, initially by promoting itself as the military wing of the UN by leading multinational military forces under post-conflict mandates in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia – 60,000 troops in the first and 50,000 in the second case at peak strength. (The first two missions followed, respectively, a NATO bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serb Republic and 78-day air war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to be sure.) A comparable situation existed in Iraq, with NATO supporting the foreign occupation of the nation from 2004-2011. In fact all the post-Cold War NATO inductees – Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia – were compelled to supply troops for Iraq as proof of their loyalty to NATO before and shortly after their accession.
And for Afghanistan. But unlike the NATO missions in the above former Yugoslav territories, that in Afghanistan was to an active war zone, constituting NATO’s first ground war and first war outside Europe.
After the military alliance took over the International Security Assistance Force, it came to command almost all of the 152,000 foreign troops in the nation and soldiers from over 50 Troop Contributing Nations (the official designation)
Those nations are:
All 28 current NATO members: The U.S., Albania, Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey.
Partnership for Peace adjuncts: Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Finland, Georgia, Ireland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine.
Others: Australia (Partners Across the Globe), Bahrain (Istanbul Cooperation Initiative), El Salvador, Jordan (Mediterranean Dialogue), Malaysia, Mongolia (Partners Across the Globe), New Zealand (Partners Across the Globe), Singapore, South Korea (Partners Across the Globe), Tonga and the United Arab Emirates (Istanbul Cooperation Initiative).
Several additional nations supplied military and security personnel to serve under NATO command in Afghanistan without being formal Troop Contributing Nations such as Colombia, Egypt (Mediterranean Dialogue), Japan (Partners Across the Globe), Moldova (Partnership for Peace) and no doubt others. Efforts were made by the U.S. and NATO to secure troop contributions from such nations as Bangladesh and Kazakhstan.
The governments and militaries of Afghanistan itself and neighboring Pakistan are linked to NATO under the Afghanistan-
NATO has air and other military bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Those three nations have also been used by NATO as part of the Northern Distribution Network and other transit routes that include as well Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Iraq, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, etc.
The war in Afghanistan, the longest in the nation’s history as well as in that of the U.S., has supplied NATO with an almost 12-year opportunity to consolidate an international military network and to develop the operational and command integration of the armed forces of almost 60 nations. This is the global NATO that among others the Obama administration’s first ambassador to the alliance, Ivo Daalder, has openly touted under that exact name since the beginning of this century.
Many NATO members and partners, particularly former Soviet federal republics in the Baltic Sea region and in the South Caucasus, have used the Afghan war to gain combat experience for their armed forces to be used in conflicts in their own neighborhoods: Georgia, for example, in preparing for any resumption of armed conflict with South Ossetia and Russia such as occurred in August 2008.
Just as NATO has followed the U.S. into the Balkans and Afghanistan, into the global interceptor missile system and so-called energy security (in fact energy war) initiatives, so it has joined Washington in the new scramble in the Arctic Ocean, cyber warfare operations and the attempt to command the world’s strategic shipping lanes and choke points.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, its name now archaic as most of its members and all of its dozens of partners do not border the Atlantic Ocean, north or south, is well advanced in its U.S.-crafted mission to expand into history’s largest and first international military bloc and an unprecedented threat to world peace.
============
Stop NATO e-mail list home page with archives and search engine:
http://groups.
Stop NATO website and articles:
http://rickrozoff.
To subscribe for individual e-mails or the daily digest, unsubscribe, and otherwise change subscription status:
stopnato-subscribe@
============
Fri Apr 26, 2013 2:19 pm (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.defense.
U.S. Department of Defense
April 26, 2013
Eagle Resolve Promotes Gulf Region Cooperation, Interoperability
By Donna Miles
WASHINGTON: The field training segment of U.S. Central Command’s three-part Eagle Resolve exercise is slated to kick off this weekend, bringing together participants from 12 nations - most from the Gulf region - to promote cooperative regional defense capabilities, the lead planner reported today.
Hosted by Qatar, the 11th iteration of the annual, multilateral naval, land and air exercise began April 21 with a command post exercise that wrapped up yesterday, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Lowe, a member of Centcom’s Exercise and Training Directorate, said during a telephone interview from Doha.
Many of the 2,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines participating in Eagle Resolve 13 are arriving at locations throughout Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for the field training exercise that begins April 28 and runs through most of next week, he reported.
Operating with about 1,000 of their counterparts, many from Gulf Cooperative [Cooperation] Council member nations, exercise participants will tackle scenarios that cross the land, air and maritime domains. The exercise’s scenarios range from hostage situations to naval and theater ballistic missile attacks to toxic chemical spills, Lowe said.
...
The exercise supports several key focus areas: integrated air and missile defense, consequence management, critical infrastructure protection, counterterrorism, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear-passive defense, and interdiction and border security, he said.
...
Senior leaders will come together to review lessons learned during the command post and field training portions of the exercise, and to discuss ways to further enhance their cooperation, Lowe said.
Eagle Resolve has evolved significantly since it began in 1999 as a seminar among Gulf Cooperation Council nations, Lowe said. It remains Centcom’s premier exercise with its Gulf partner nations, he said, with participants continuing to enhance their own capabilities while gaining better understanding of each other’s ways of operating.
...
While promoting the spirit of collaboration between U.S. Central Command and the Gulf Cooperative Council nations, Eagle Resolve underscores U.S. commitment to the region, Lowe said.
“The focus is on demonstrating our continued dedication to the region and our regional partners,” he said...
------------
http://www.defense.
U.S. Department of Defense
April 26, 2013
Hagel, Crown Prince Discuss U.S.-U.A.E. Defense Cooperation
By Cheryl Pellerin
====
“The additional F-16s will increase both nations' interoperability and enhance their ability to perform joint and coalition security operations,” Little added.
Hagel expressed appreciation for United Arab Emirates’ contributions to NATO missions in Afghanistan and Libya.
They also discussed a range of regional challenges, he said, including the need for Iran to meet its international obligations with respect to its nuclear program, the ongoing conflict in Syria...
====
ABOARD A MILITARY AIRCRAFT: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s first trip to the Middle East included a visit and official dinner with Gen. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy supreme commander of the United Arab Emirates armed forces.
The two men met last night and reaffirmed the strong U.S. commitment to defense and security cooperation between their countries, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said today in a statement.
In particular, he said, they discussed the United Arab Emirates’ purchase of 25 F-16 Block 60 aircraft and the U.S. decision to release standoff weapons for sale to defend the United Arab Emirates. The smart standoff weapons can navigate to their targets and are more precise and can be fired at further distances than conventional weapons.
“The additional F-16s will increase both nations' interoperability and enhance their ability to perform joint and coalition security operations,” Little added.
Hagel expressed appreciation for United Arab Emirates’ contributions to NATO missions in Afghanistan and Libya.
“The secretary and the crown prince concurred on the need to build on the already robust defense ties, which include bilateral exercises and training, to expand cooperation in such areas as ballistic missile defense,” Little said.
The United States and the United Arab Emirates agreed to hold regular bilateral defense consultations to further coordinate expanding military activities, the press secretary said.
They also discussed a range of regional challenges, he said, including the need for Iran to meet its international obligations with respect to its nuclear program, the ongoing conflict in Syria, and countering the threat of violent extremism.
Hagel’s trip to the Middle East, which began April 20 and ends later today, also took the secretary to Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to discuss common issues and interests in the region.
============
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U.S. Department of Defense
April 26, 2013
Eagle Resolve Promotes Gulf Region Cooperation, Interoperability
By Donna Miles
WASHINGTON: The field training segment of U.S. Central Command’s three-part Eagle Resolve exercise is slated to kick off this weekend, bringing together participants from 12 nations - most from the Gulf region - to promote cooperative regional defense capabilities, the lead planner reported today.
Hosted by Qatar, the 11th iteration of the annual, multilateral naval, land and air exercise began April 21 with a command post exercise that wrapped up yesterday, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Lowe, a member of Centcom’s Exercise and Training Directorate, said during a telephone interview from Doha.
Many of the 2,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines participating in Eagle Resolve 13 are arriving at locations throughout Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for the field training exercise that begins April 28 and runs through most of next week, he reported.
Operating with about 1,000 of their counterparts, many from Gulf Cooperative [Cooperation] Council member nations, exercise participants will tackle scenarios that cross the land, air and maritime domains. The exercise’s scenarios range from hostage situations to naval and theater ballistic missile attacks to toxic chemical spills, Lowe said.
...
The exercise supports several key focus areas: integrated air and missile defense, consequence management, critical infrastructure protection, counterterrorism, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear-passive defense, and interdiction and border security, he said.
...
Senior leaders will come together to review lessons learned during the command post and field training portions of the exercise, and to discuss ways to further enhance their cooperation, Lowe said.
Eagle Resolve has evolved significantly since it began in 1999 as a seminar among Gulf Cooperation Council nations, Lowe said. It remains Centcom’s premier exercise with its Gulf partner nations, he said, with participants continuing to enhance their own capabilities while gaining better understanding of each other’s ways of operating.
...
While promoting the spirit of collaboration between U.S. Central Command and the Gulf Cooperative Council nations, Eagle Resolve underscores U.S. commitment to the region, Lowe said.
“The focus is on demonstrating our continued dedication to the region and our regional partners,” he said...
------------
http://www.defense.
U.S. Department of Defense
April 26, 2013
Hagel, Crown Prince Discuss U.S.-U.A.E. Defense Cooperation
By Cheryl Pellerin
====
“The additional F-16s will increase both nations' interoperability and enhance their ability to perform joint and coalition security operations,” Little added.
Hagel expressed appreciation for United Arab Emirates’ contributions to NATO missions in Afghanistan and Libya.
They also discussed a range of regional challenges, he said, including the need for Iran to meet its international obligations with respect to its nuclear program, the ongoing conflict in Syria...
====
ABOARD A MILITARY AIRCRAFT: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s first trip to the Middle East included a visit and official dinner with Gen. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy supreme commander of the United Arab Emirates armed forces.
The two men met last night and reaffirmed the strong U.S. commitment to defense and security cooperation between their countries, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said today in a statement.
In particular, he said, they discussed the United Arab Emirates’ purchase of 25 F-16 Block 60 aircraft and the U.S. decision to release standoff weapons for sale to defend the United Arab Emirates. The smart standoff weapons can navigate to their targets and are more precise and can be fired at further distances than conventional weapons.
“The additional F-16s will increase both nations' interoperability and enhance their ability to perform joint and coalition security operations,” Little added.
Hagel expressed appreciation for United Arab Emirates’ contributions to NATO missions in Afghanistan and Libya.
“The secretary and the crown prince concurred on the need to build on the already robust defense ties, which include bilateral exercises and training, to expand cooperation in such areas as ballistic missile defense,” Little said.
The United States and the United Arab Emirates agreed to hold regular bilateral defense consultations to further coordinate expanding military activities, the press secretary said.
They also discussed a range of regional challenges, he said, including the need for Iran to meet its international obligations with respect to its nuclear program, the ongoing conflict in Syria, and countering the threat of violent extremism.
Hagel’s trip to the Middle East, which began April 20 and ends later today, also took the secretary to Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to discuss common issues and interests in the region.
============
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http://groups.
Stop NATO website and articles:
http://rickrozoff.
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stopnato-subscribe@
============
Sat Apr 27, 2013 6:33 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://english.
Voice of Russia
April 27, 2013
NATO’s global expansion unparalleled in history and fraught with catastrophe - Rozoff
Recorded on April 21, 2013
Audio at URL above
US-controlled NATO dangerously and relentlessly continues its global expansion, "something unparalleled in history and something fraught with, not only danger, but with catastrophe.
Hello! This is John Robles, I’m speaking with Mr Rick Rozoff, the owner and editor of the stop NATO website and mailing list.
Robles: Hello Rick! How are you this afternoon, I suppose it is?
Rozoff: It’s evening here, and is probably morning there, but I’m doing fine. It’s good to talk to you again John.
Robles: Yes, it’s a pleasure to be speaking with you again. NATO’s push into East Asia and Balkan marine training exercises. Can you fill us in on the latest?
Rozoff: Yes, I’m glad you chose those two examples in relation to the formerly North Atlantic Treaty Organization, now essentially redefined by itself and by its main sponsor and director, the United States, the Pentagon, as a global military force.
By the Balkans {should be Baltics] we're of are of course talking about Russia’s northwest border, and with the parts of Asia that the Secretary-General of NATO went to last week, South Korea and Japan, we are talking about northeast Asia. So, you see on either side of the Eurasian landmass, on either side of Russia, indeed, the fact that the US is employing NATO as a global military intervention force.
I’ll start with the second one first, perhaps. Anders Fogh Rasmussen Secretary General of NATO made the first-ever visit by a NATO Secretary General to the nation of South Korea, the Republic of Korea, where he signed a special partnership program with that nation. This is a country, of course, which is still in a, “technically” a state of war with its northern neighbor, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. And it is one where the Deputy Secretary General of NATO, as we discussed in your program not too long ago, Alexander Vershbow, recently mentioned, or alluded to the fact, and pretty strongly asserted it in fact that, should a military conflict erupt between North and South Korea and the US intervene on behalf the South, that NATO could activate its Article 5 mutual military assistance clause and enter the fray against North Korea, which almost inevitably would have to pull China into the vortex and you might have a global conflagration.
But also, Rasmussen, after he visited South Korea, went to Japan where he signed a partnership arrangement, or understanding, with Japan as well. And I should mention, something we’ve had occasion to talk about before John, but I don’t think it sunk in properly with a lot of listeners around the world, is that roughly a year ago, immediately preceding the NATO summit in Chicago, from where I’m speaking, NATO announced the launching of its latest military partnership program which is called, and this is a rare bit of candor, it’s called Partners Across the Globe. And it includes four countries in the Asia-Pacific region which formerly had been referred to by NATO as Contact Countries, capital C in both cases, who had lent military support and are still doing so to this day by the way for the war in Afghanistan. Those four countries are exactly South Korea and Japan, and also Australia and New Zealand.
But the new Partners Across the Globe, which is just in its infant state, it is likely if NATO has its way to expand pretty substantially, includes in addition to the four countries I’ve just mentioned Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mongolia and Iraq; that is, all countries in the broader Asia-Pacific region.
Robles: If I understand this correctly, South Korea, Japan, you said, New Zealand and Australia, they are now de facto NATO members and they fall under Article 5?
Rozoff: Not quite. They are NATO partners, now officially NATO partners, under the category of the new Partners Across the Globe, and there is discussion within NATO, particularly within the ruling circles in the United States, I should add; those in the White House, but particularly in the US Senate, the likes of John McCain come to mind. People who are saber-rattling warmongers, to be frank with you, and ones who have mooted the point quite openly, particularly with the five-day war between Georgia and Russia, when Georgia invaded South Ossetia in August of 2008, that what these architects of US and of general Western foreign policy have been advocating is the application of the Article 5 NATO mutual defense clause to NATO partners as well as NATO members.
So, in this case it would in fact apply to Japan or to South Korea, or for that matter to Afghanistan or Pakistan in various scenarios. But what I was laying out earlier was something a little different: that if conflict erupted between the two Koreas and the United States inevitably intervened on behalf of its military client, South Korea, and then North Korea responded in any way to the United States, then NATO would do what it did in 2001 after the attacks in New York and Washington DC on September 11th and invoke its Article 5 mutual defense clause ostensibly to defend the United States against North Korea.
Robles: Is this official now, they can use Article 5?
Rozoff: Since the creation of NATO they can always use Article 5 supposedly in defense of any NATO member state. But the discussion now is in terms of partners as well as members. But let me give you an idea of the extent to which things are going on.
At the end of the last month, March, NATO held what it referred to as a Military Partnership Coordination Workshop in Bosnia, in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. Bosnia is currently, this is another new category, and there is a proliferation of new NATO categories and partnerships and so forth, but this one is called aspirant nations [or countries], those nations aspiring to NATO membership. And they currently are Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Georgia.
These are the four countries that NATO has clearly indicated are going to be the next full member states. Of course one could argue that Georgia is not technically in Europe is all. At the end of March this workshop, or event, was held in Bosnia. It included 28 partnership nations from the Partnership for Peace, the Mediterranean Dialogue, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and the new Partners Across the Globe.
So, in addition to the 28 NATO member states these are 28 more states. These are, by the way, not all of NATO’s partners around the world by any stretch of the imagination, but 56 nations from around the world under one military command, that US-dominated of course.
Again, I hope it gives your listeners an understanding of how the expanding international NATO network is something unparalleled in history and something fraught with, not only danger, but with catastrophe if its momentum is not arrested.
As we’ve talked about several times in this show and you have initiated the discussion on more than one occasion, Russia has been seeking assurances from the United States and NATO for at least a decade that the joint US-NATO interceptor missile system that is already in Phase 1, and it is to go through three more phases to take in almost the entire European continent, ostensibly against Iran, and if you believe what Brussels and Washington say, North Korea, which is ludicrous, it's an absurdity, but in fact it is targeting Russia.
Russia has sought assurances that the missile system is not aimed at it. It’s received verbal assurances to that effect but nothing else. And the US and NATO have adamantly refused to engage in what is called sectoral, or any sort of joint missile defense enterprise with Russia, which is what Russia has been seeking. Particularly through the NATO-Russia Council, which had been in abeyance for several years after the war with Georgia in 2008, with NATO of course supporting Georgia before, during and after the war. And Russia had then not participated in the council but has resumed its participation.
I should mention that with Russia being involved in that bilateral partnership with NATO, that means that every country in Europe, and I really wish your listeners would take this in, that every country in Europe, excluding the five micro-states, is either a member of NATO or a member of NATO partnership program.
This is John Robles, you were listening to part one of an interview with Rick Rozoff – the owner of the stop NATO website and mailing list.
Voice of Russia
April 27, 2013
NATO’s global expansion unparalleled in history and fraught with catastrophe - Rozoff
Recorded on April 21, 2013
Audio at URL above
US-controlled NATO dangerously and relentlessly continues its global expansion, "something unparalleled in history and something fraught with, not only danger, but with catastrophe.
Hello! This is John Robles, I’m speaking with Mr Rick Rozoff, the owner and editor of the stop NATO website and mailing list.
Robles: Hello Rick! How are you this afternoon, I suppose it is?
Rozoff: It’s evening here, and is probably morning there, but I’m doing fine. It’s good to talk to you again John.
Robles: Yes, it’s a pleasure to be speaking with you again. NATO’s push into East Asia and Balkan marine training exercises. Can you fill us in on the latest?
Rozoff: Yes, I’m glad you chose those two examples in relation to the formerly North Atlantic Treaty Organization, now essentially redefined by itself and by its main sponsor and director, the United States, the Pentagon, as a global military force.
By the Balkans {should be Baltics] we're of are of course talking about Russia’s northwest border, and with the parts of Asia that the Secretary-General of NATO went to last week, South Korea and Japan, we are talking about northeast Asia. So, you see on either side of the Eurasian landmass, on either side of Russia, indeed, the fact that the US is employing NATO as a global military intervention force.
I’ll start with the second one first, perhaps. Anders Fogh Rasmussen Secretary General of NATO made the first-ever visit by a NATO Secretary General to the nation of South Korea, the Republic of Korea, where he signed a special partnership program with that nation. This is a country, of course, which is still in a, “technically” a state of war with its northern neighbor, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. And it is one where the Deputy Secretary General of NATO, as we discussed in your program not too long ago, Alexander Vershbow, recently mentioned, or alluded to the fact, and pretty strongly asserted it in fact that, should a military conflict erupt between North and South Korea and the US intervene on behalf the South, that NATO could activate its Article 5 mutual military assistance clause and enter the fray against North Korea, which almost inevitably would have to pull China into the vortex and you might have a global conflagration.
But also, Rasmussen, after he visited South Korea, went to Japan where he signed a partnership arrangement, or understanding, with Japan as well. And I should mention, something we’ve had occasion to talk about before John, but I don’t think it sunk in properly with a lot of listeners around the world, is that roughly a year ago, immediately preceding the NATO summit in Chicago, from where I’m speaking, NATO announced the launching of its latest military partnership program which is called, and this is a rare bit of candor, it’s called Partners Across the Globe. And it includes four countries in the Asia-Pacific region which formerly had been referred to by NATO as Contact Countries, capital C in both cases, who had lent military support and are still doing so to this day by the way for the war in Afghanistan. Those four countries are exactly South Korea and Japan, and also Australia and New Zealand.
But the new Partners Across the Globe, which is just in its infant state, it is likely if NATO has its way to expand pretty substantially, includes in addition to the four countries I’ve just mentioned Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mongolia and Iraq; that is, all countries in the broader Asia-Pacific region.
Robles: If I understand this correctly, South Korea, Japan, you said, New Zealand and Australia, they are now de facto NATO members and they fall under Article 5?
Rozoff: Not quite. They are NATO partners, now officially NATO partners, under the category of the new Partners Across the Globe, and there is discussion within NATO, particularly within the ruling circles in the United States, I should add; those in the White House, but particularly in the US Senate, the likes of John McCain come to mind. People who are saber-rattling warmongers, to be frank with you, and ones who have mooted the point quite openly, particularly with the five-day war between Georgia and Russia, when Georgia invaded South Ossetia in August of 2008, that what these architects of US and of general Western foreign policy have been advocating is the application of the Article 5 NATO mutual defense clause to NATO partners as well as NATO members.
So, in this case it would in fact apply to Japan or to South Korea, or for that matter to Afghanistan or Pakistan in various scenarios. But what I was laying out earlier was something a little different: that if conflict erupted between the two Koreas and the United States inevitably intervened on behalf of its military client, South Korea, and then North Korea responded in any way to the United States, then NATO would do what it did in 2001 after the attacks in New York and Washington DC on September 11th and invoke its Article 5 mutual defense clause ostensibly to defend the United States against North Korea.
Robles: Is this official now, they can use Article 5?
Rozoff: Since the creation of NATO they can always use Article 5 supposedly in defense of any NATO member state. But the discussion now is in terms of partners as well as members. But let me give you an idea of the extent to which things are going on.
At the end of the last month, March, NATO held what it referred to as a Military Partnership Coordination Workshop in Bosnia, in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. Bosnia is currently, this is another new category, and there is a proliferation of new NATO categories and partnerships and so forth, but this one is called aspirant nations [or countries], those nations aspiring to NATO membership. And they currently are Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Georgia.
These are the four countries that NATO has clearly indicated are going to be the next full member states. Of course one could argue that Georgia is not technically in Europe is all. At the end of March this workshop, or event, was held in Bosnia. It included 28 partnership nations from the Partnership for Peace, the Mediterranean Dialogue, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and the new Partners Across the Globe.
So, in addition to the 28 NATO member states these are 28 more states. These are, by the way, not all of NATO’s partners around the world by any stretch of the imagination, but 56 nations from around the world under one military command, that US-dominated of course.
Again, I hope it gives your listeners an understanding of how the expanding international NATO network is something unparalleled in history and something fraught with, not only danger, but with catastrophe if its momentum is not arrested.
As we’ve talked about several times in this show and you have initiated the discussion on more than one occasion, Russia has been seeking assurances from the United States and NATO for at least a decade that the joint US-NATO interceptor missile system that is already in Phase 1, and it is to go through three more phases to take in almost the entire European continent, ostensibly against Iran, and if you believe what Brussels and Washington say, North Korea, which is ludicrous, it's an absurdity, but in fact it is targeting Russia.
Russia has sought assurances that the missile system is not aimed at it. It’s received verbal assurances to that effect but nothing else. And the US and NATO have adamantly refused to engage in what is called sectoral, or any sort of joint missile defense enterprise with Russia, which is what Russia has been seeking. Particularly through the NATO-Russia Council, which had been in abeyance for several years after the war with Georgia in 2008, with NATO of course supporting Georgia before, during and after the war. And Russia had then not participated in the council but has resumed its participation.
I should mention that with Russia being involved in that bilateral partnership with NATO, that means that every country in Europe, and I really wish your listeners would take this in, that every country in Europe, excluding the five micro-states, is either a member of NATO or a member of NATO partnership program.
This is John Robles, you were listening to part one of an interview with Rick Rozoff – the owner of the stop NATO website and mailing list.
