Daily Archives: September 16, 2021

Defense Secretary James N. Mattis is in Brussels, Oct. 3-4, for two days of meetings with his fellow defense ministers at NATOs headquarters.

So what is NATO, and what does it do?

NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It was formed in 1949 to provide collective security against the threat posed by the Soviet Union.

The original members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. Though the Soviet Union has long since fallen, the world has continued to be a dangerous place throughout the nearly seven decades since NATO was formed, and now 29 nations are members of the alliance.

To make it easier for so many countries to communicate, NATO has two official languages: English and French. This means that it also has two acronyms -- in French, NATO is OTAN, which stands for Organisation du Trait de l'Atlantique Nord.

One of the founding principles of NATO is Article 5 of its charter, which states that an armed attack on one member nation would be considered as an attack on all. The alliance invoked Article 5 for the first time in its history following the 9/11 attacks.

In addition to contributing to the war effort in Afghanistan, NATO member nations responded by helping the U.S. military with airspace defense and security over the United States and with maritime patrols in the Mediterranean Sea to guard against movement of weapons and terrorists.

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Some myths go back millennia.

This myth, if it is one, goes back to 1990 -- and just over three decades later, it continues to form a central grievance in Russian President Vladimir Putin's testy narrative about Moscow's ties with the West.

It's the question of NATO expansion -- an unhealed scab that, with Russian-Western relations at their lowest ebb since the Cold War, has been picked off yet again and is now bleeding into public view.

Casting the issue into the spotlight this time was not an angry tirade from Putin but a report by the London-based think tank Chatham House, which, in a May 13 publication, aimed to dispel a host of what it called "myths and misperceptions" that have shaped Western thinking and kept it from establishing "a stable and manageable relationship with Moscow."

One "myth" in particular kicked off a furious debate in e-mail threads, chat rooms, listservs, and on Twitter: "Russia was promised that NATO would not enlarge."

"The U.S.S.R. was never offered a formal guarantee on the limits of NATO expansion post-1990," John Lough, the research associate who authored the section, wrote. "Moscow merely distorts history to help preserve an anti-Western consensus at home."

Nikolai Sokov, a former Russian diplomat who served in the Foreign Ministry in Moscow between 1987 and 1992, disagrees. "The Chatham House piece is very bad -- it sounds to be as a piece produced by the Ideology Department of the Central Committee" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he told RFE/RL.

"We didn't have to come to this, though, and the issue could have remained a small script in history that does not need to be resolved," he said. "It is more about the manner of NATO enlargement and the arguments used to promote enlargement."

And so, more than two decades after NATO's original 16-member Cold War composition was first enlarged to take in three former Warsaw Pact states, and with Putin poised to potentially stay in office into the 2030s, the past is very much present.

"We are still debating it because the proponents of enlargement believe they acted honorably and helped millions of people who had been under Soviet domination achieve their freedom," said Jim Goldgeier, who served on the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

"The Russian narrative is the West deceived them and acted in a way that left them out of post-Cold War Europe. It's just very hard to bridge these positions, and emotions do run high, given that the hopes 30 years ago of Russia being part of Europe didn't materialize," Goldgeier told RFE/RL. "So there are those who want to blame the West, and those who want to blame Putin."

'Not On The Agenda'

For many Cold War scholars, the genesis of the narrative can be primarily traced back to a February 1990 visit by James Baker, the U.S. secretary of state under President George Bush, to Moscow, where Baker met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Berlin Wall had come down three months earlier, and Western leaders were openly discussing whether a divided Germany would be reunified, something that Moscow feared -- and if that happened, whether NATO forces would ultimately be stationed in what was then East Germany, something that terrified Moscow.

According to transcripts released years later by the United States and Russia, Baker broached the subject with the argument that it was better to have a unified Germany within NATO's political and military structure than outside of it.

"At no point in the discussion did either Baker or Gorbachev bring up the question of the possible extension of NATO membership to other Warsaw Pact countries beyond Germany," according to Mark Kramer, director of the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard University's Davis Center, who reviewed the declassified transcripts and other materials.

"Indeed, it never would have occurred to them to raise an issue that was not on the agenda anywhere, not in Washington, not in Moscow, and not in any other Warsaw Pact or NATO capital," Kramer wrote in a April 2009 journal article.

Gorbachev met with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl the day after the meeting with Baker. According to Kramer's research, the subject of German unification was more prominent on the agenda than it had been with Baker. "Gorbachev did not seek any assurances about [NATO enlargement] and certainly did not receive any," Kramer wrote.

Ultimately, according to Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador who was serving at the State Department at the time, the United States, France, and Britain, along with Germany, agreed not to deploy non-German NATO forces in the former East Germany.

In 1999, years after German reunification and the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Eastern Europe, NATO admitted three former Warsaw Pact countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.

Ten years later, in an interview with the German newspaper Bild, Gorbachev complained that the West had tricked Moscow. "Many people in the West were secretly rubbing their hands and felt something like a flush of victory -- including those who had promised us: 'We will not move 1 centimeter further east,'" he was quoted as saying.

Gorbachev later appeared to reverse himself, saying the subject of enlargement in fact never came up in 1989 or 1990. "The topic of 'NATO expansion' was never discussed; it was not raised in those years. I am saying this with a full sense of responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country brought up the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact had ceased to exist in 1991," he told the newspaper Kommersant in October 2014.

Gorbachev could not be reached for comment. A spokesman did not immediately return an e-mail.

'The Spirit Of The Treaty'

Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin, was wary about NATO expansion but did not oppose it, according to declassified memos. "We understand, of course, that any possible integration of East European countries into NATO will not automatically lead to the alliance somehow turning against Russia," Yeltsin wrote in a September 1993 letter to U.S. President Bill Clinton. "But it is important to take into account how our public opinion might react to that step."

But Yeltsin also cited what he cast as assurances given to Soviet officials during the negotiations on German unification, writing that "the spirit of the treaty on the final settlement...precludes the option of expanding the NATO zone into the East."

Four years later, in an effort to assuage Moscow's concerns, NATO and Russia signed the NATO-Russia Founding Act, a political agreement stating, among other things, that "NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries." In 2002, NATO and Russia agreed to set up a joint consultative council, ostensibly as a venue to resolve disagreements. But the council was seen as ineffectual by many in Moscow.

Then, two years later, NATO underwent the largest expansion in its history, admitting seven more Eastern European countries, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which had been republics of the Soviet Union and chafed under Moscow's rule. While it wasn't the first time a NATO member bordered Russia or the Soviet Union, now a NATO member's troops potentially could be located just 625 kilometers from Moscow.

In 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, an annual high-level gathering of officials, diplomats, and experts from both sides of the Atlantic, Putin unleashed a broadside against NATO, as well as the United States, accusing the alliance of duplicity and of threatening Russia.

"I think it is obvious that NATO expansion has no relation with the modernization of the alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust," he said.

"What happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today?" Putin asked -- a remark that prompted some head-scratching, because the debate has focused almost exclusively on remarks made before the Warsaw Pact fell apart. "Where are these guarantees?"

A year after Putin's speech, at a Bucharest summit in April 2008, NATO declined to offer Georgia and Ukraine a fast-track path to membership but assured the two countries that they would eventually join the alliance.

Four months later, Russia invaded Georgia, destroying its armed forces, occupying two regions that had already had near complete autonomy, and humiliating the country's then-president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who had openly called for Georgia to join NATO.

In 2014, after Russia seized Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula and equipped, financed, and provided military support to separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine, stoking a war that continues today, NATO called off any consultations with Russia.

Shortly after Russia's parliament endorsed the takeover of Crimea, Putin said in a speech that Russia was humiliated by NATO's expansion. "They have lied to us many times, made decisions behind our backs, placed us before an accomplished fact," he claimed.

'Selling The Narrative'

Among those who have fueled Russian claims of a promise was the last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, who has repeatedly insisted, both in congressional testimony and more recently, that Gorbachev had received assurances that if Germany united, and stayed in NATO, the borders of NATO would not move eastward.

But Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador and deputy foreign minister who is now head of the Munich Security Conference, said that agreements on German reunification, including the 1990 treaty known as the 2+4 Treaty, which formally paved the way for the two countries to become one again, made no mention of NATO enlargement.

"Russia has been quite successful in selling the narrative that, in exchange for their acceptance of German unification via the 2+4 Treaty, they were promised that there would be no NATO enlargement," Ischinger told RFE/RL. "Russia presents herself as the victim."

"Whatever promises about non-enlargement may have been discussed...in 1990, the hard fact is Russia accepted enlargement, with detailed conditions, and in writing, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was agreed," Ischinger said in an e-mail. "Later Russian claims that different promises had been made in 1990 are therefore simply not relevant. In fact, this is propaganda, and it is in bad faith!"

Sokov, the former diplomat who is now at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, said the biggest issue was that NATO's enlargement could have been "managed" to minimize misunderstandings.

A Missed Chance?

The initial expansion, in 1999, came around the time of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, aimed at stopping advances by Serbian forces against the Kosovar population. Russia's outrage over the campaign was crystallized by the decision of then-Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov to turn his U.S.-bound jet around over the Atlantic Ocean in protest. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was another action that raised Moscow's ire.

"It is wrong to wave away Russian concerns," Sokov said.

The 1997 Founding Act was well-intentioned, as was the 2002 creation of the NATO-Russia Council, he said. But he argued that these agreements have "never worked," arguing that the alliance often takes actions that affect Russian or regional security without consulting Moscow.

"The procedure that is used instead is that NATO makes a decision and then tries to convince Russia that [the] decision is good and should be accepted. The latter is a formula for disaster," he said. "I strongly believe that it was possible to both enlarge NATO and avoid conflict. The chance was missed and today we see a worsening conflict of which the question about guarantees given by Baker is nothing but a symbol."

But for other scholars, the problem lies mainly in Moscow, with the way Putin and the Kremlin perceive the history of NATO enlargement and the way they present it to the Russian public and the West.

"The notion that NATO made and broke a promise that it would not accept any new member states in Eastern Europe is one of the core ideas driving Russia's view of a hostile West," said Keir Giles, a consultant and co-author of the Chatham House report.

And that seems unlikely to change anytime soon.

In an article for the Brookings Institution in 2014, Pifer, the former ambassador, predicted that for Putin, "The West's alleged promise not to enlarge the alliance will undoubtedly remain a standard element of his anti-NATO spin.

"That is because it fits so well with the picture that the Russian leader seeks to paint of an aggrieved Russia, taken advantage of by others and increasingly isolated -- not due to its own actions, but because of the machinations of a deceitful West," Pifer said.

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Did The West Promise Moscow That NATO Would Not Expand? Well ...

The rapid collapse of the Afghan government has prompted an agonized and wide-ranging debate across the NATO alliance about what went wrong. Among other things, it is now painfully clear that there was a longstanding mismatch between the goals of the NATO mission and the realities facing the Afghan government, particularly its security forces.

Over the past two years, I saw evidence of a similar mismatch while serving in the NATO mission to Iraq. Among other roles, I led a number of high-level NATO advisers working in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. There, I had a chance to look into the engine room and observe some of the contradictions, complications, and shortcomings of NATOs approach.

My purpose here is not to be unduly pessimistic or to draw exaggerated parallels with Afghanistan. NATO is doing important work in Iraq, and the Iraqi government is grateful for its presence. But to succeed, NATOs leadership must align its interests with those of the Iraqis they are there to help. First, this means better coordinating NATOs policies and messaging with the Iraqi government. And second, it means understanding the logic of the Iraqi security establishment rather than simply trying to recreate it in the image of a NATO military.

Background

As Iraq has been through almost 20 years of internal conflict, improving the skills and success rate of the Iraqi military is not a simple task. It requires patience. Moreover, the NATO mission in Iraq is an advisory mission there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. It is a non-combat mission and has only very limited leverage with the Iraqi government. There is no real carrot or stick if the Iraqis do not agree on a priority.

NATOs current engagement in Iraq began in 2015 with a demand-driven Defense Capacity Building package. This was tailored to provide advising, assistance, and training within the Iraqi defense sector. A trust fund was also established with money to support different aspects of capacity building. In 2018 a formal mission was established: NATO Mission Iraq. This involved military trainers providing tactical-level training at different Iraqi branch schools and civilian and military experts providing strategic level advice in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. Canada led the NATO mission from 2018 until November 2020.

When Denmark took over the management of the mission in November 2020, it was in a somewhat dilapidated state. Due to the security situation and COVID-19, virtually all of the missions activities had been shut down between January and August 2020. Over the late summer and autumn, the mission staff and the Canadian leadership worked hard to get as much of the mission re-established as possible before Denmark took command. On Oct. 31, the mission declared full operational capability.

Mounting Mismatch

It soon became clear, however, that the mission was not fully ready. Most significantly, the tactical-level advisory plan that had been written to guide the activities of the mission on the ground in Baghdad did not have the necessary resources or, crucially, the support of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. Basically, the realities on the ground were not in sync with the strategic communications from NATO and the ambitions at headquarters.

This misalignment only deepened in February 2021 when NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the growth of the NATO mission from 500 to 4,000 personnel. He also announced that NATO would expand its advising activities to include additional Iraqi institutions like the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Peshmerga, and the Counter Terrorism Service.

Stoltenbergs announcement was intended to show that NATO was strongly committed to the fight against terrorism and remained an actor in the international security arena. In Baghdad, however, many of us working in the NATO mission were caught by surprise. NATOs messaging had obviously not been coordinated with the actual stakeholders in Iraq and indeed was not even targeted at them. I was working at the time as director of the Ministerial Advisory Division and head of all NATO advisors working in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. I saw firsthand the frustration this caused.

Looking down the corridor of the Advisory Division in Union III atthe mission headquarters in Baghdad, I could see a lot of empty chairs. I was simply short of resources, and I knew from a recent high-level meeting in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense that there was no particular appetite for the mission to expand to include additional institutions beyond the Ministry of Defense.

The whole numbers game was also an extremely sensitive point for the Iraqi government. From an Iraqi point of view, the 3,500-person increase caught them by surprise. They knew from intensive dialogue between the NATO mission and the Iraqi government that the mission was set to expand. However, they knew nothing about the number. The political situation in the country was very fragile, and no one wanted to be publicly on the hook for letting such a large number of foreign troops enter the country.

BestLaid Plans

When the mission expansion was announced, the NATO headquarters in Mons, Belgium and in Naples, Italy were producing revised operation plans. Also, two years after the mission began, we were in urgent need of a new tactical-level advisory plan because the current one was not fully supported by the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.

Consider several examples. NATO plans called for the mission to advise that the Iraqis merge their two military intelligence services into one and their five military commands into three. After approximately a month of interaction with the Iraqis in late 2020, it turned out that the Ministry of Defense did not want to implement these measures. The plan lacked an understanding of the logic of the Iraqi security establishment and seemed to be an expression of the wishes of the West rather than of what the Iraqis actually wanted or needed.

As a result, the merging of the two military intelligence services was a non-starter from the beginning. One of the services, called M2, is a tactical-level service that provides intelligence at the unit level. M2 reports to the chief of defense. It is an old service and it primarily works through human intelligence. The other service, the Directorate General for Intelligence and Security, is a newly-established operational and strategic service that reports to the minister of defense and has more diverse intelligence assets than M2. When engaging with the primary Iraqi military decision-makers, it was obvious that there was no appetite for merging the two services. It was politically impossible under the current circumstances. The same was the case with the merging of Iraqs five service commands into three. Army aviation was supposed to be subject to the ground forces and air defense subject to the air force. However, that was counter to Iraqi ambitions. In short, important elements of our plans reflected NATOs way of doing things, not the Iraqis.

These examples illustrate how hard and time-consuming it is to develop and implement a demand-driven plan in a complex, politically tense security environment. There was a logic to Iraqi power relations and its system of multiple overt and covert agendas. Successfully working within this required numerous engagements at many levels in order to build a feeling of local ownership and create sustainable plans for development.

One could say that external advisers may know better than Iraqis what advice to give. But when the mission is demand-driven, it can be difficult if not impossible to create ownership and engagement on advice that is not in demand. Often, the NATO headquarters in Naples was convinced that we simply needed to be more forceful. Have you slammed your hand on the table? one NATO general asked, apparently forgetting that NATO is not in Iraq as an occupying power.

The fact is sometimes we did slam the table. Sometimes it helped. But when the subject wasnt something the Iraqis were interested in, it had no effect. Slamming the table has to be done intelligently, alongside explaining the benefits of improvements and reform. When the Iraqis disagreed on an overall objective, it could take months to plan a meeting. When there was agreement and ownership, the meeting could be scheduled within a few days.

How Can NATO Do Better?

Rethinking NATOs approach can help its mission succeed, thereby enhancing the security of Iraq and the alliance as well.

First, NATO decision-makers need to align their ambitions with those of Iraqi decision-makers. It is obvious when working in the engine room of the mission that NATO does not fully know what achievements to work towards and why NATO is in fact present in Iraq. If NATO is there to support the fight against terrorism in a demand-driven mission, then NATO needs to actually listen to the Iraqis and reflect their messaging. Trying to simultaneously speak to a Western audience focused on the survival of NATO and an Iraqi one concerned about the presence of foreign troops in the country will hamper the missions prospects.

Second, NATO planners should lower their criteria for success. Today, the mission in Iraq is subject to completely unrealistic demands from NATO headquarters. Institutional advising at the strategic level requires great patience. Spending time on quantitative measurements for example, tallying the percentage of the Iraqi security forces that have received training in human rights is a waste of time. All the more so for a mission that does not provide human rights training or even know the total number of Iraqi security forces. In short, the success of a mission focused on developing long-term defense planning, readiness systems, or logistics capabilities cannot be measured in quantitative terms alone.

Despite the contradictions, complications, and shortcomings of NATOs approach, the mission has made real progress since October 2020 in developing a new advisory plan in close cooperation with the Iraqis. During this time, advisors also built strong relations with their main interlocutors and engaged with Iraqis at all levels within the Ministry of Defense.

The result of these efforts was that by February 2021 the mission had a new advisory concept that the Iraqis applauded and a new advisory plan that the Iraqis agreed with. In fact, it was the first time that they themselves had seen the mission complete a detailed plan for the work they wanted and had been allowed the chance to give feedback. NATOs dreams of merging their two military intelligence services into one and their five military commands into three were abandoned. As a result, more emphasis could be given to institutional development. And this meant the things the Iraqi Ministry of Defense was waiting for, such as defense planning programs, human resource advising, and doctrine development.

This progress shows what patience, understanding, and greater alignment can achieve. It should be a model for success in Iraq and also for other missions to come.

Peter Dahl Thruelsen, Ph.D., is the dean of the Royal Danish Defense College, he was seconded to the NATO mission as director ministerial advisory division. He has been deployed to Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq and did his Ph.D. through field studies on NATOs engagement in Afghanistan.

Image: U.S. Army (Photo by Master Sgt. Horace Murray)

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Misaligned in Mesopotamia: Conflicting Ambitions in NATO Mission Iraq - War on the Rocks

Conducting military exercises is one of the ways to show Russia that countries are ready to repel Russian aggression if it expands.

Oleksandr Musiyenko, an expert at the Center for Military and Legal Studies, said this on the air of Dom TV channel, Ukrinform reports.

He reminded that the Joint Efforts 2021 military exercises would start on September 22 in the air, at sea, and on land. The units of Ukraine and NATO member states will be involved.

At the same time, Joint Efforts 2021 will be launched after the completion of the Zapad 2021 joint Russian-Belarusian military exercises which last from September 10 to 16.

"NATO member states are aware of threats [posed by Russia] and they use all the mechanisms provided to us by the NATO EOP status. The whole algorithm is involved. And we do not sit idly by. We strengthen defense, we understand our drawbacks that need to be eliminated, and we are doing our best to conduct joint exercises with NATO," the expert said.

Ukraine conducts training and consultations. There are NATO ships in the Black Sea and Russia is restrained in its actions. These mechanisms work, Musiyenko added.

"We are also moving forward, we are not standing still. There are two areas. The first is to boost military aid and joint exercises. The second is political, diplomatic efforts. We need to make good use of the UN General Assembly site to draw attention to all these issues which concern not only Ukraine," the expert summed up.

As a reminder, Joint efforts 2021 strategic command and staff exercises will be carried out according to NATO standards in Ukraine from September 22 to 30. Troops from 15 countries, including 11 NATO member states and 4 partner countries, will share their experience with the Ukrainian army. The exercises will be held at almost all training areas of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

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Military expert tells how NATO helping Ukraine strengthen its defense capabilities - Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed that the military alliance gave approval for the Biden administrations complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, pushing back on speculation that leaders voiced objections to the decision.

In an interview with The New York Times published Friday, the NATO chief said that none of the alliances members voiced objections to President BidenJoe BidenOvernight Defense & National Security Milley becomes lightning rod Democrats hope Biden can flip Manchin and Sinema On The Money Presented by Wells Fargo Democrats advance tax plan through hurdles MOREs plan to leave Afghanistan before his announcement in April.

At the time, he aimed for a complete withdrawal by Sept. 11, the 20 anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Those familiar with Stoltenbergs thinking at the time said that he was not pleased with Bidens decision not to implement a conditional withdrawal that would have required the Taliban to reach a negotiated political solution with the Afghan government, though the NATO chief declined to confirm this to the Times.

Stoltenberg said that while NATO would have preferred to achieve a political solution in Afghanistan, he noted that the problem was that the Taliban did not want to negotiate if the government in Kabul was part of those negotiations.

We were all aware that this was a difficult decision and we were faced with a difficult dilemma, he told the Times. Threaten to leave and risk the Taliban returning, or to stay, but then with more fighting and more casualties.

Stoltenberg, noted that it was hard for other allies to continue without the United States, and explained that the decision was made in April to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and all allies agreed.

So, I felt that after the decision was made, then the main focus was on how to make sure that we were able to implement it in the best possible way, he added.

The news from the NATO chief comes as Biden has continued to receive widespread criticism for his handling of the withdrawal, which many of the presidents critics have blamed for the Talibans rapid consolidation of power in the country.

However, Biden has continued to stand by his decision, arguing that the risks to U.S. citizens and Afghan allies would have grown stronger the longer they remained in Afghanistan.

Stoltenberg in his interview with the Times also pushed back on growing support among some European Union leaders for the development of an independent military force for the regional bloc, arguing that any attempt to weaken the bond between Europe and North America will not only weaken NATO, it will divide Europe itself.

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NATO head says alliance signed off on US withdrawal from Afghanistan | TheHill - The Hill

While the American, British, and French allies all maintained airports in the enclave of West Berlin, these were off-limits to West German air traffic, military or otherwise, due to the Four Powers regulations governing the divided city. Not expecting West German combat jets to be over East German territory, the French air traffic controllers at Tegel Airport, in the French sector, assumed the Luftwaffe planes were lost civilian aircraft and suggested they land at Tempelhof, the U.S. airbase in Berlin.

At Tempelhof, it seems the controllers were too busy with a Pan Am DC-6 airliner that was arriving from Frankfurt, that they failed to notice the Luftwaffe jets. However, once the presence of the lost fliers became clear, the Tempelhof controllers instead requested the Thunderstreaks land at Tegel. While the two pilots considered turning around and flying back to the West, the Tempelhof controllers were aware MiGs were now in pursuit and called for the F-84Fs to drop down low over Berlin, aiming for Tegel.

Not only did Tegel Airport have a much longer runway, but it was also less busy with other aircraft movements. Perhaps most importantly, it was further outside the city than the centrally located Tempelhof, making it less likely that the F-84Fs would be spotted. After all, as West German aircraft, they were prohibited from the airspace over Berlin.

At 3:29 PM local time, the two Thunderstreaks touched down at Tegel in Berlins French sector. There then began a frantic effort to conceal the jets arrival, and they were quickly put in hangars. The French told the Soviet representative at the Allied air security center that the Tegel landing had been an emergency, the result of an unforeseen technical failure.

Pfefferkorn and Eberl were undoubtedly lucky to survive unscathed. The shooting down of NATO aircraft that strayed across borders into Warsaw Pact airspace was by no means unusual at this time. In 1964, a similar incident, in which a U.S. Air Force T-39 Sabreliner training jet flew into East German airspace, ended with the American jet being shot down by a MiG, and its three crew were killed. Two years later, a similar fate befell a U.S. Air Force RB-66 Destroyer reconnaissance jet, although its crew survived.

As it was, Pfefferkorn and Eberl, and their two jets, had escaped the attentions of the Warsaw Pact air defenses but had nonetheless created an international incident. The West German government in Bonn issued an apology, describing the incident as the result of human and technical failure and pointing to the failure of the compass system in both the jets.

The Soviets were still unhappy, making a formal protest against what they described as a premeditated provocation and threatening to shoot down NATO aircraft were it to happen again. This is a threat, as already noted, that they would follow through on.

As for the F-84Fs, it was decided to leave them where they were. After they had been cannibalized for their engines and, ironically, their navigation systems, the jets were unceremoniously buried south of the runway at Tegel.

The pilots, both of whom had been arrested by the French authorities on account of their unplanned Berlin visit, only returned home after nearly five weeks. Their mistake was to prove costly to their careers: both were demoted to ground crew roles. The situation for their commanding officer, Oberstleutnant Siegfried Barth, who had flown for Nazi Germany during World War II, was, initially at least, even worse off. He was relieved of his duties until West German Minister of Defense Franz Josef Strauss relented due to legal pressure and reinstated him.

Not surprisingly, the implications of the incident caused concern in both East and West Germany. In the East, the fact that two NATO jets had flown as far as the capital without being stopped was alarming. For the West, there were questions at the highest levels as to how the F-84Fs had managed to penetrate so far into enemy airspace at a time of serious tensions, when it was known that it could have resulted in them being shot down or, worse still, convincing the East Germans and Soviets that they were under attack. As part of its response, the Luftwaffe declared that any subsequent such incursion of Warsaw Pact airspace would lead to the immediate dismissal of the responsible commander.

In a conflict that was punctuated by close calls, and in which the expanding nuclear arsenals on both sides meant that the threat of annihilation was very real, the incident of September 14, 1961, is a reminder of just how high the stakes were.

Contact the author: thomas@thedrive.com

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Two NATO Fighters Accidentally Flew Behind The Iron Curtain 60 Years Ago Today - The Drive